By Quintin Smith on August 25th, 2010 at 12:53 pm.
UPDATE: Stardock’s own Gamer’s Bill of Rights is no longer to be found on their site, which looked a bit odd. But actually you can still find it on its own site here. So that’s that stuff out the window. Anyway, there’s more… That’d be the Bill of Rights featuring the proud bulletpoint:
“2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.”
Fantasy strategy epic Elemental: War of Magic was released by Stardock this week, a day ahead of schedule. We’re still waiting on our code (as are most other online gaming sites, judging by the game’s barren metacritic page), but the metaphorical word on the digital street is that it’s broken to the point of being unplayable, having never convincingly left the beta that was available to pre-order customers. Here’s people being upset right on the RPS forum.
PC Gamer are up in arms about it being unfinished in a similar manner to earlier Stardock release, DemiGod, which also came out earlier than its announced release date. PCG go on to quote a post from Stardock CEO Brad Wardell on the Quarter to Three forums in which he responds to a displeased customer, seemingly in absolute contradiction of his own Rule #2:
“…the hostility in this thread exceeds my own tolerance for putting up with said hostility.
Also, to anyone, like you Ben, saying the game is like an “early beta” then well, please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.”
We’ve contacted Stardock and await review code. Their contact reports that a day zero patch has left them rather busy.
“I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.”
Man, that’s up there with Spike Milligan’s “I told you I was ill” tombstone epitaph.
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One wonders what business model the CEO has that involves people not buying the company’s product.
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People say, “How can you sell this for such a low price?”, I say, “because it’s total crap”
Gerald Ratner 1991
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@JustOneWay Haha, kudos to you, sir!
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Lol, I quite enjoy the game- it’s got problems sure- but I like it and it’ll only get better *shrug*. I still say even with the modern ‘patch it later’ attitude that can happen these days were a hellofalot better off than back in the day…*shrug2*
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I love how I told everyone this in the last Elemental post and yet everyone was like NAH BRO ITLL BE FINE.
This game never showed any sign of being any good at all, but I preordered it out of naivete and nostalgia for MoM. Joke’s on us, I guess.
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yeah the race selection in this game is really disappointing. humans with different cloths.,
klingonssome orange dudes with a weird forehead, some smurfy guys who love face tattos, and some ugly grey dudes. i wasn’t expecting this. i don’t know if i should blame the dudes they contracted out to write the background or stardock themselves so i will blame both.report
I don’t own and have not played the game, so I can’t comment on its issues. Regarding the post from Quarter to Three quoted here, I can say that Brad Wardell has an acrimonious personal history with that community. I believe both sides bear blame for that, but it’s still something to keep in mind when someone quotes a Qt3 post of him saying something like this.
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I will not ever buy another StarDock release until this CEO is fired forcefully. It’s the only saving grace that SD could perform at this point.
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Brad actually made a rare apology for that remark:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/392474
As to “this CEO” being “fired forcefully,” I encourage you to hold your breath for that to happen.
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Brad Wardell *is* StarDock. Firing… is not going to happen. In a sense I don’t think it’s even possible.
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I really valued Stardock integrity when it released the gamers bill of rights.
This is a real shame, and now I’m just disappointed in them :(
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I agree, it’s rather sad to see one of the champions of the consumer removing their bill of rights from their site.
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Did you hear that gunshot?
That was Stardock shooting themselves in the foot.
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Probably ran out of time and money and had to push it out, if only they’d followed Duke Nukems shining example of waiting until it was ready…
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Digging through the forums, it seems that they either released now or in February in order that they could secure shelf space in retailers on either side of the Holiday launch window.
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Stardock are unlikely to run out of money. Their games aren’t as big budget as AAA games, and their desktop skinning business is apparently very successful.
On the whole I like Stardock, but if this comes down to Wardell (acclaimed novelist) releasing early from a purely financial point of view, it would be nice if he just said so and held his hands up.
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All of these problems are with boxed retail copies too, right?
Which means this isn’t really about the actual releasedate/activation date – the buggy code had already been published on disc a while before.
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The retail copy has been a different codebase to the digital copy, so how stable the version on the disk is isn’t clear. It will be missing some of the balancing changes in the Day 0 patch though, so presumably Sovereigns as magical machine guns and kids mysteriously getting triple figure health points will still be in.
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What Nathan says is truth.
Plus, Bill of Rights site appear to still be up,
http://www.gamersbillofrights.org/
And Here’s Brad’s response!
http://forums.elementalgame.com/392474
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There is a thread on the RPS forums with similar opinions:
http://rockpapershotgun.com/rpsforum/topic.php?id=3251
I admit I was fairly excited about Elemental and intended to buy it on release, but I learned from mistakes in the past and waited for some 0-day opinions and, well, I did the right thing.
I’ll still keep an eye on how things develop, Stardock is known to improve their titles for a long time and Elemental could very well be in great shape a few months from now. The core concept sounds great, after all.
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Yes. Look how Stardock supported Demigod – they promised the earth… how many new heroes did they deliver? I know they were only the publisher but Wardell was still making a lot of promises.
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Gas Powered Games was the primary developer on Demigod. Most of the blame for post release support lies with them, as far as I can tell.
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The game is great fun, and with the latest 2 patches released 2 days in a row, its perfectly playable and not beta in my opinion…but they did fuck up this release royally. havent seen a worse handling of PR.
Credit to them for getting 2 patches out pretty much instantly thou.
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Just to say that post a couple of patches I’ve experienced very few problems, and can actualy start enjoying the game.
I know the bugyness is pretty disappointing- and that we all expect a bit more from stardock… however if you look at the release day version instead of the prerelease version it isn’t awful just a little frustrating. At the end of the day don’t rage about it just walk away and some back to it in a few weeks/months and when its the game you want it to be.
Oh also I know Brad Wardel is being a bit of a dush but hes just a person upset by some pretty extreme reactions to the game… I dont get why allot of people on the net are reacting like he just offed their firstborn!
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I dunno, maybe because he put forth the idea that no game should be released unfinished and they did exactly that and tried to hide that they ever said that?
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Theres a difference between some pretty stupid comments, and reacting like he murdered your first born.
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You like that phrase. In case you’ve never interacted with a human being, “I will be more reluctant to engage in commerce with that person in future’ is not a typical response to murder.
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All I’m going to say is:
1. I take back everything good I had to say about Stardock on my comments under your previous Elemental article based on how they handled this. Although, to be balanced, they only released early when retailers started breaking their contract to sell it on the weekend.
2. I’m going to reserve any judgment about the game itself until the actual day zero release is published today. But I’m not very hopeful.
3. I would strongly recommend people wait until at least the 30-day and 60-day patches are out. Or better still, wait until the expansions are out and there’s a cheap bundle sale in a couple of years. And some decent mods that actually put some content in the game.
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day zero is out fyi.
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Sometimes I hate being right.
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*phew*, good thing I’m not interested in this game anyway, I dodged a bullet there.
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Try before you buy, thats the only thing i can suggest about this game, i wasted good money on this piece of shit game.
From my experience:
1. Tactical battles dont work… at all.
2. Alt-tab crashes the game constantly.
3. Graphical effects get turned off by themselves or dont work at all.
4. The game looks horrible (look to point 3).
5. The gameplay is slow to the point of the game becoming a chore to play.
6. Most of the gameplay systems are either broken or so obtuse that they punish the player constantly.
7. Tutorial? simple or a simple clean U.I that you can understand? Nope.
8. Bugs… Bugs… and more bugs.
These are just some of the issues with the game. Putting it simply… dont buy.
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To be fair the campaign is pretty much a tutorial.
An incredibly tedious, long winded and obtuse tutorial, but a tutorial none the less.
Suffice to say that so far I am not terribly impressed by the game.
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Is that with the 0-day patch?
Can’t seem to find a changelog…
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Very dissapointed in this game so far. It’s sad to see this game fail. It seems as if FPS games are the only thing that get any time or money put into them anymore.
I’d like to buy games like this to support something more than 1 game design all the time but when they fail so utterly as this you can’t help but feel ripped off. They will probably go on to say that “There’s no market” for turned based strategy games anymore when it fails due to all the problems.
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Welcome to today’s lecture on Public Relations: How Not To Do It.
Okay, let’s tot it up. Breaking promises; hypocrisy; arrogance; poor business planning; insulting your core demographic; responding poorly to fair criticism. The whole affair just reeks of… poor, unprofessional management. And for it all to come out so publicly – as everything inevitably does in the Information Age – must be disastrous for Stardock. This can only end in the company’s employees suffering for the behaviour of their boss.
Here’s hoping the game IS well supported and fixed quickly so those people who have purchased/pre-ordered already aren’t left out of pocket.
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This. Read everything, HULK-SMASHED with rage and returned, only to find you’d (Kast, in case the ever-delightful comments system insists on making me look more of a tool than usual, yet again) RIPPED THE THOUGHTS FROM MY VERY MIND.
YOU BAST—
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It’s definitely a shoddy release. I stayed away from as much information as possible before buying the game, relying on the fact that past Stardock first-party releases have more than lived up to my expectations (yes, that includes Demigod, which I play as a single-player game).
Alarm bells started going off during the intro cinematic, which is a series of non-animated vignettes with a few poor pan and scan effects. And indeed, the in-game graphics look like something from at least 5 years ago. But I play Dwarf Fortress, so I’m prepared to cut a game some slack in the graphics department as long as the gameplay is up to scratch.
The trouble with that is, I don’t know if the gameplay really is up to scratch.
There is no tutorial at all, and the interface is completely opaque to new-comers, which we all are at the moment apart from those that played the beta. Reading community pages results in the usual advice under such circumstances, that you should go and view third-party tutorial videos, but this really isn’t good enough in a game at this price point and in this genre.
I’ll give it some time, as it looks like there’s a great game under the surface, but it really can be considered unfinished in its released state.
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For me the game is fun for aboout 15 minutes then the framerate drops through the floor. Which is odd because it didn’t do that during the beta.
I think there’s still a good chance that this will turn out to be good game but increasingly it’s looking like the smart move is to wait a month and see what state the game is in then before buying.
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Hmm, the day 0 is also much buggier on my system than beta 4 was. Still, I’m used to playing a beta version of it so that’s why I’m not scandalised, just mroe fo the same.
The campaign is appalingly dull, but a skirmish is probably too much too soon for someone coming new to the game.
I worried back in June that an August release was ambitious but I think stardock kind of backed-itself into a corner. That said, the game needed to be out before christmas, and ideally before Civ5 to make sales.
Terrible that they took the bill of rights down too -even if it’s not related to Elemental’s release. Makes them look rather bad…
But that said, my annoyance is tempered byt he fact that they are a small, indie developer and have repeatedly promised to deliver continuous improvement to the game post release (for free).
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There is a patch that fixes video memory leaks for certain video cards available now. It sounds like this might fix your issue.
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I’ll wait for the impressions from the actual release/review version and maybe see what it’s like after a few patches. I’m sure that plenty of good strategy games only really came together at the last minute when all the game systems were in place. Although that waterfall style development does seem to be a sort of “seat of the pants” way of making a game as complex as a 4x title.
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It absolutely guts me how much bad press Stardock are recieving over Elemental, and I can’t even claim the press are wrong. It’s not just PCGamer UK, Tom Chick of Fidgit has also been critical of the state the game has been released in.
It’s a game I’ve followed pretty avidly since it’s announcement over a year ago, on paper I felt it looked like it could be a great game. I played some during the beta and even helped squash a bug or two. I’ve played a bit of it over the last few nights, and it’s a pretty ok game. High praise eh? I mean, it’s not “one more turn” good in all the mechanics it tries to pull off, but the implementation of most is sound enough. There’s loads of fun to be had.
It’s sad to see that Stardock have released it and given the press no real option but to highlight how unpolished it is first, and even to not recommend it as a buying guide, rather than some of the genuinely interesting and fun aspects.
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Having re-read that, I just want to affirm that PCG are absolutely right to recommend people not buy the game in it’s current state. I wouldn’t recommend it myself right now. Maybe in a few weeks when it’s properly polished.
My problem is – when have post-release patches to fix a game ever “saved” it from poor sales and poor reputation? I can’t think of any.
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Fallout 2, STALKER, Bloodlines, Witcher…some people even like Torchlight, even though its still retains half of its release bugs. But these are all actually good (or semi-good in case of Torchlight) games. Elemental, in contrast, is a Stardock developed game, which is…
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Yeah I think you’re right, alas. Not because “it’s a Stardock game”. GalCiv 2 is universally accepted as an excellent game, but just because even when the proper polish has been applied and the tecnical bugs have all been squashed in Elemental, the game will still only be ok. Just ok. Fine. Acceptable. It’s not going to be a cult-classic, it’s not pushing the envelope. It’s a good time, some of the time.
It’ll find a niche community of those who paid to be in the beta who will continue to play and enjoy it (possibly myself included), but I don’t think it’ll make a dent in the conciousness of PC gamers in 3 months time when it’s fixed.
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“GalCiv 2 is universally accepted as an excellent game”
Unfortunately that is true, for reasons i will never in my life even pretend to understand. I dont see any difference whatsoever between general content quality, UI, design, and atmosphere of GalCiv2 and Elemental. Bad all around in both games. With a discount for GalCiv2 for having actually good performance for its time, unlike…
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What, prey tell, are the major bugs in Torchlight? I’ve sunk around 120 hours into it and the only things I’ve noticed have been the odd problem with achievements not triggering properly. A couple of CTDs during extremely long sessions but it seems to save itself locally fairly frequently so that was at worst a bit inconvenient.
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Bloodlines was never saved, sadly.
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Tsk, tsk.. now that’s not the way to go about it.
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The game is a huge pile of broken and half-finished stuff, maybe in some months with several patches it will become better, but for now, would not recommend anyone to waste their money on it.
And what many people said, the User interface is completly horrid (is so hard to hire a guy to do the user interface that is a designer first and not a artist), but when you add that to the not a single tuturial or explanation of how to play the game, is so horrible to play is insane.
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Interesting point. i do wonder how many of the UI designers in the video game industry are actually graphic designers rather than concept artists. i often see beautifully drawn interfaces with terrible design.
“form follows function” should be their first and foremost rule in this aspect. and if they’d study graphic design this would have been the case.
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Suddenly I’m glad Stardock couldn’t be arsed to release this game in Europe. Saved me some money.
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Stardock has released two big patches in the last 24 hours so it’s looking good on the support front. It also looks like the day 0 patch fixes a lot of the bugs and the crashes that people were complaining about on the RPS forums. The interface also got a total makeover, but I haven’t actually sat down and properly played it yet so I can’t comment as to whether it’s an improvement over pre-release.
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On Elemental: I sincerely recommend reading Tom Chick’s diaries of it, in addition to the comments, where some people from Stardock has replied in a thoroughly more civil manner than above.
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The game is unstable, and the interface is complex, pretty and unfriendly, but is activatelly getting all the problems fixed.
The game is not a disaster, is just that has been released in beta state.
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I preordered this game almost a year ago. Bad choice.
It isn’t just bugged as hell, is very poorly designed and executed and it looks like crap.
God, even master of magic and Agoe of Wonders 2 in their own, pixelated way, were far better looking than Elemental and incomparably more fun.
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Oh look, Stardock released another buggy, unfinished pile of garbage and broke their own ‘rules’ that they blast other developers for. It’s nice to see people are finally waking up to what an incompetent developer they are and how big of a con artist Brad Wardell is.
A trip down memory lane:
Remember when PC gamers started fighting back against DRM and Brad Wardell swooped in on his magic carpet to promise everyone that piracy wasn’t a problem and that they would never use DRM?
Remember when demigod came out, got pirated more than it sold in its first month and got utterly crippled by its online service being flooded, leading to Stardock developing their own new DRM? Oh but wait its different because it allows you to transfer ownership!
Remember when Stardock released what was basically a press release dictating how other developers should release (Gamer’s Bill of Rights) and support their games, only to go on and release two unfinished, beta state, games in Demigod and Elemental?
Remember when Demigod had such an outcry on the Stardock forums and around the web at what a sorry state it was in at release that they released an embarrassingly staged video of ‘board meetings’ where they came up with ‘action plans’ to fix the game? Also remember when Wardell got so fed up of criticism he started banning paying customers from the game’s official forums for voicing legitimate complaints?
Remember how no one would even know Stardock existed outside of shitty desktop modifiers if they didn’t swoop in at just the right time to capitalize on the space 4x niche after moo3 crashed and burned?
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You just said everything I would have. It’s funny when people paint Wardell as a consumer crusader because every time I look up “frogboy” on the Impulse forums he is attacking someone for disagreeing with him or telling people he was never against DRM.
He’s also fond of this “then don’t buy my games” line, I have seen him use it before. I remember one thread where someone was pointing out that “Goo” is DRM and Wardell told him if he thought Goo was too much DRM he didn’t want his business.
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Remember when Demigod was developed by Stardock?
Me neither. It was developed by Gas Powered Games.
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Stardock was responsible for the multiplayer code. Exactly the part of the game that was broken on release.
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Stardock was responsible for the part of the game which was broken, of course they washed their hands of it and claimed other issues caused the giant clusterfuck to happen.
Obviously when the shoe was on the other foot, and Sins of a Solar Empire was a huge success, commercially and critically, they took all the credit for that one and not IronClad, the real developers.
Again, Brad Wardell is the biggest con man in this industry and watching him sell an image to PC Gamers who see what they want the industry to be like is absolutely disgusting.
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This is why Steam is better.
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I was pretty hyped on this, but at the last minute avoided, I just sensed something was up. After Demigod I’m losing faith in Stardock, and the bill of rights now looks extremely embarrassing. Whatsmore, (I just have to say this), the ceo comes across as a total whinger.
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Y’know, some developers really need to learn that sometimes it’s okay to delay a game a month or two if not-delaying will result in this sort of thing. Especially in the last five years now that updates are easy to beam out to all of your customers via Impulse/Steam/whatever.
Iatedave: “Probably ran out of time and money and had to push it out, if only they’d followed Duke Nukems shining example of waiting until it was ready…”
Yes, but Valve Time always works. Programming for PCs is fundamentally more complicated than programming for consoles, and if you try to put state of the art graphics in your PC game you will always have to fight armies of bugs and glitches resulting from non-standard hardware. As an amateur developer (who thankfully has yet to make anything in 3D and thus has been spared the complexities of it, but even 2D ain’t easy if you’re doing it from scratch), I know this far too well, and that’s why I will always forgive delays in PC games. Even Episode 3.
I do hope this is a post-patch gem so it can be worth my money in a few months. GalCiv 2 was wonderful out of the box. GalCiv 2 was also 2D. There might be a connection there.
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I’m pretty sure they wanted it out before Civ5… that must have been the big factor in getting it out ASAP without even working multiplayer or battles.
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The tactical combat works. And the multiplayer is there, they’re just not turning it on till the end of the week since their IT staff had to work this weekend.
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I just hope that people take Brad Wardell up on his advice. Unless gamers vote with their wallets and don’t buy Elemental, nothing will change with the way Stardock operates.
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When the stores broke the release date he and the whole team came in all weekend and got a partial release out of the pre-orders and Beta testers, then continued to work like mad to get things ready for the day 0 patch. They were trying very hard to treat their customers well. A comment taken out of context when it was targeted at a friend who (Brad felt) cheapshotted him while being sleep deprived… I wish more game companies worked that hard to “do the right thing” by their customers.
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Dammit. I sure hope at least Civilization 5 is great then.
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Mmmm…along similar lines I wonder if Civ5′s imminent release influenced Elemental’s launch window.
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AFAIK it’s more of a case of Stardock either launching now or in February, after the Christmas rush (of which you can argue Civ V is a part of) to ensure shelf space (and to not get overshadowed by a big game e.g. Civ V).
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The crashes, missing graphics, weak tutorials, horrible AI – all of these will be patched, probably sooner than later.
There are however far worse problems with Elemental. The entire design (or lack of thereof) is completely directionless. Instead of cohesive set of rules that mesh together (see: Master of Magic), it’s a mish-mash of random features haphazardly thrown together without much rhyme or reason. This, I’m not sure if they’ll be able to fix and certainly not soon.
That said, the game has bears that shoot fireballs.
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bears that shots firebals? thats nothing…
theres a bug where a faction leader is a dragon, you can mate with it, and have hybrids dragon-men, that are seriusly OP…
this is fixed on today patch.
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The drake was an easter egg for the beta version. It ruled the Snathi, who fans of GalCiv II would recognise as the malevolent squirrel race.
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To be fair, those are more the charming sort of bugs we laugh at in Dwarf Fortress than gamebreakers.
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Only my ‘Don’t pay more than £30 for a PC game’ policy stopped me buying this from their site yesterday. Now I won’t buy it at any price, because that guy sounds like a dick.
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This is sad. And disappointing. And then sad again.
And then a very shocking testament to Mr Wardell’s hypocritical way of marketing things.
And lying outright. And being utterly terrible at PR.
And judging the state of a game you are involved in making.
I know of author’s blindness when creating, but if you have to learn how to play more from AAR type forum posts and guessing, then you’ve reached Paradox Interactive levels of “as it was released” uselessness and defaulted on your own hypocritical demands/claims, as the RPS article rightfully points out.
And then sad again. Such high hopes, both for Stardock and the game, crushed.
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lolwat
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But people, do read the entire thread! There are so many Elemental supporters that it inspires me lot of tenderness :’)
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It was always risky for a developer publisher to put up a bill of rights for videogames but I guess Stardock’s boss had to do something to catch everybody’s attention. It’s like they set a trap for themselves. They put themselves in a position where there was basis to gauge their failure. That’s like a smoker announcing to everyone he knows that he’s never lighting another one again.
And never say bad things about a rival company that’s generally known to be the good guys. Yeah Valve sounded like they dissed the PS3 but that’s really now what they actually said. Look at how they’re now saying that PS3 is better than the 360. In the context of what they’re talking about, that was basically true.
Something about throwing fireballs at people from inside a grass hut. Or something like that.
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Well, it’s not exactly unprecedented for a PC game to be released in a buggy state. This is why I don’t pre-order games and rarely buy them til they’ve been out a while. (No, I don’t pirate them either.) Well, that and I have a huge backlog of games as it is.
And, of course, it’s the nature of the internet that every game that has even minor flaws will be branded as unfinished, unplayable, an insult to all gamers everywhere, etc., by someone, somewhere. (I’m not saying that the complaints are exaggerated here. I clearly don’t know. Just that such complaints *do* tend to be exaggerated, and are probably worth looking at through that lens.)
But Stardock’s public response to what is (unfortunately) a very common phenomenon surrounding a game’s release is troubling. I’m sure it’s a very stressful time for them but, well, I’m expected to keep doing my job and not melt down publicly when I’m under significant stress at wok, so they certainly don’t get a free pass on those grounds.
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Then credit hastily taken away for releasing a game that needed to be patched twice in two days. Theres good customer support and then theres hastily covering your arse to maintain some credibility.
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That was in reply to antilogic.
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I was ready to pull the trigger on this a few days ago, but all of the player input led me to reflect on the finitude of human life and the questionable judgment of playing an unfinished, slipshod piece of work in the years remaining to me. I still hope it’ll get tightened up for me to consider a 6-month purchase, but it sounds like a total mess right now.
My biggest concern is all of the feedback I’ve seen about the inconsistencies in the ruleset. I can more easily tolerate a buggy game than a poorly-crafted ruleset.
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I think that the articles by pc gamer is unfair. Most of the problems are just fixed with the first patch. Stardock has a particular “partnership” with his fan. They don’t have problem to test the game for a day or two. And give feedback. Do you want destroy a game like this, HUGE, because what? Bah.
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This isn’t a blockbuster like HOMM or CiV, it’s a long time seller, so they advise you to wait until it’s finished to buy it, following the “is the game great after a year?” rule, also applied to Oblivion, Dragon Age or other big projects.
PS: Demigod wasn’t good even a year in. I hope they still give new patch and heroes as they promised even though the game sells crap. MUA HA HA HA
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Demigod was developed and supported by Gas Powered games.
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I’m trying to think of a large, , deep, ambitious grand strategy game that was in a proper state on release and I’m coming up blank. It’s kind of the nature of the ultra-complicated beast, which is of course why Brad should never have made that promise to begin with. I’m still very much interested in Elemental, but I’m in no rush.
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The Civilization series, most Anno games, Gal Civ 2 and the original Medieval Total War were all released in solidly functional states. Any patches were mostly balancing or compatibility fixes.
But yeah, I agree that grand strategy games and long rpgs must be a nightmare to beta test effectively.
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Civ 4? Ok maybe not that ambitious, as it had the previous civs to fall back on. Frankly I’m not sure elemental is that ambitious, and its not like its got a high tech high res engine to gobble up expensive art assets. I could forgive a few bugs and niggles around the edges here and there for this kind of game, but the reports suggest something more severe and harder to excuse.
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Civ hasn’t been ambitious for some time, the Anno games aren’t grand strategy, and Gal Civ 2 had serious problems at launch.
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sequels are always easier than new IP, you often are building on tried and tested code that works.
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@Bhazor – IMHO, Gal Civ 2 was a bit of a mess at release also, including IIRC a bug that caused some people’s high-end video cards to overheat. It took about a year post-release before it was patched up to being what I’d call well-polished. It’s to their credit that they kept plugging away at it post release for so long, but at release, I remember being disappointed at its state and seeing lots of upset posters in the forums.
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Yeah, Gal Civ II had a few major issues on release. The core of the game was still there though. Personally I find Elemental the same, the core game is good, the only real problem is it needs some polish (the UI in particular). The spell list could do with an overhaul, but they’ve always said the quests and spells in the release are get-you-by stuff until the day 30 patch after they’ve had a chance to assess the feedback. Although it’s nice to see they’ve took notice of those of us who complained the spell lines were too generic.
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It’s not about whether Elemental is buggy or not, frankly, it’s about presenting that information in the most needlessly slanted, inflammatory way possible. My real worry here is that PC Gamer, and by repetition RPS, just contributed to the premature death of an extremely promising game. Torpedoing early sales of a grand strategy game because of a (typically) buggy launch has generally been the province of the big, brain dead game sites (your IGN’s and Gamespots) who lack sway in the kind of community that’s interested in these games anyway. I thought RPS and PC Gamer had more sense, they certainly have the capacity to do a lot of damage. A warning to wait a bit for patches is one thing, that’s just being helpful, but a major headline reading “don’t buy this” or a piece purporting to expose the (non-existent) rescinding of the gamers bill of rights? Out of context quotes from 82 page forum arguments? Accusatory comparisons to games developed by completely different people? What the hell is this? Two web sites I greatly respected have just done a great deal of harm to their own reputations for fair, thoughtful, informed games coverage. I hope they both see their way clear of this.
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That wasn’t supposed to be a reply, though I’m confident the error was mine.
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As Tom Francis – the (excellent and pathologically responsible) writer responsible for the PCG article – mentioned, you’d have to go a long way to find a bigger Stardock fan than him. Aside from the tens of thousands of words he’s written about it (including a literal book[let])I recall the 2009 PCG Top 100 podcast, where he goes out of his way to pick GalCiv II as the game he’s most proud of pushing up the list singlehandedly. If there’s a slant here it is not against Stardock, and the article is a warning to ‘stay well away’ from the launch and wait for patches, not to avoid the game. Heck, you could argue that his stated intention to delay his review until SD have had a chance to patch up is corruption against consumers.
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I enjoyed GalCiv 2 a great deal, and I liked Sins of a Solar Empire as well. Hence I preordered Elemental (mainly to get into the beta). I’m quite disappointed with how it is now, but I’m hoping the game will see some substantial patches in the future. GalCiv 2 was supported very well, and since Wardell seems to be invested in this game (emotionally and because he likes it, I’m not talking about the monetary side here) I’m quietly hopeful. But yes, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy it at the moment, but do check back in a month or so and see how it is then.
Also, I find Brad Wardell an interesting character. He cares about his games, and he does engage with the community, which I think is great. However, he can be rude and careless as well.
I didn’t buy Demigod, and I had a good opinion of Stardock. That will change if Elemental doesn’t receive the attention it needs and deserves now. The removal of the Bill of Rights from their site is not a good move, but I haven’t given up yet.
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My man I am in the same boat. I am a fan of GalCiv2 and Sins so I generally am a Stardock supporter. When I heard they were doing Fantasy 4x years back, I was already on board.
After some time as a “casual” (ie. lazy) beta tester and finally playing build v1.05, it seems they have released to us a less than complete game. A lot of the grandeur they talked about closer to the announcement of the game is totally absent. I do enjoy the “frontier-settlement” vibe and I am learning to appreciate what it *is* not what they said it would be but the feature list shrunk almost as a quick as the original Fable’s…
The thing I am holding out on is while we are all playing Civ5, they will be patching this thing up with a fever so our return is all the better. And hopefully those mod tools add up to something – this may be the start of some lego 4x fun
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Game probably needed a month more of dev, guess what will be released next month at the same approximate date? Civ5… No wonder they want to be out now…
No one noticed that? Civ 5 is probably their biggest treat, delaying the game would have put it right against it.
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@Dude – They could have waited, I think Wardell said the next retail slot was next August. That might have been a better move, in hindsight. Obviously they wouldn’t want to compete with Civ 5 (even though the two games are very different really) but waiting until next year would have achieved the same thing, and the game could have been more polished.
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One more year is a big gap to recoup your development expenses. I agree it is not the same as civ5, but it is the same kind of game.
To be honest I have played the game yesterday with the pre-day0 release and it was awful, now the day-0 patch has improve the game greatly, still a bit buggy but far from unplayable like a lot of people claim. Maybe I am just lucky but I tried it on two rigs, one mid-spec, one low-spec and it works quite well.
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@Dude – Yeah, it runs ok for me as well now. A year is a long time, but it seemed like they had plans to release in August if they couldn’t make this release.
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@Me – I’ve accidently been spreading misinformation. The next retail date was actually late February next year (as mentioned by a poster later in these comments), I was being very dumb about what month we’re in now.
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Wow, I just bought Sins of a Solar Empire the other day (yes, I’m very, very late) and now I’m beginning to regret supporting a company with that badly egotistical of a CEO.
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@PostmanX3 – That isn’t all he is. If you read some of his dev journals on the site (regarding Elemental but I liked his ones about GalCiv 2 back in the day) you get the impression he does care about his games. Even if he can be abrasive and rude, there is a positive side to him too. So good and bad, like most people.
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Yeah with Brad it’s important to remember you’re buying a game, not a friend. So he may be a prick, but that isn’t what matters really. Since Sins of a Solar Empire is great thats no problem.
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I don’t see what’s so egotistical about saying “if you don’t like our games, don’t buy them”. In fact, I’d say it was simply stating the obvious.
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Hmmm, I was interested to play this when I saw articles about it earlier on RPS, but the price and the things I’m hearing certainly keep me at bay.
I think I’ll sit things out and wait until the price is halved at least, assuming I will still care to buy it then…
So for now…
“please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games”
I will stay away. Enjoy not having my money.
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I realized that with their last update, the stardock client runs for itself at startup, so I uninstalled that shit and I’m not going to look back. EVER.
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That is an option you can turn off in the preferences panel.
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Is really weird that windows don’t ask for the admin password to make a app start with it. I think is a giganteous hole.
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Which is addressed by UAC but why bother thinking for yourself eh?
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Let’s be fair here: The guy’s not getting a lot of sleep.
Being on the eastern timezone, for every day since release, he’s on the forums at 11:00 AM, and his last posts tend to be around 5…AM.
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indeed. I think it’s ridicolous attack Stardock, really.
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@BruceCampell
Why? They’re a games company who’ve failed at a comfortable release of one of their products, and not for the first time. Worse, they’ve renegade on their own promises in their “Gamers Bill of Rights”. Then their CEO goes out and makes utterly insane (from a business standpoint) remarks to his own customers.
They’ve obviously had problems not of their own making (i.e. the retailers), but they haven’t handled the situation very well before or after.
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But talking about his sleep schedule is not fair. That’s not what his company is selling. It’s not what he’s charging money for, and it is none of our business.
The only *fair* thing is to talk about the game that they want us to buy. Is it worth buying, yes or no. Is Is the support customers are getting good enough? And if not, then criticizing Stardock is perfectly fail.
I don’t give a damn how much sleep their CEO has been getting, and I don’t see how that is at all relevant.
I you want fairness, then stay on topic and defend Stardock’s decision to release a game in the state it’s in, or Wardell’s decision to be an ass towards his customers. That’s fair. Bringing in other topics is not fair, whether they count in Wardell’s favor or against him.
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Well, if we’re being fair, again, I’m expected to keep my temper in check when I’m at work, and certainly never to be rude to customers, no matter how stressed I am and how little sleep I’ve had.
Mind you, I’m not a CEO, or anything close.
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I think people are being a bit harsh.
Stardock has done some good things in the past, the bile aimed at them right now is a bit undeserved, even though I do agree that they built much of their reputation on attacking other developers (“oh, look at us, we don’t use protection, oh no, because we are awesome and we care about you, everyone else is crap” etc. etc.).
The “don’t buy our games” bit is a rare slip up from Wardell, who usually is very considerate and looks like he’s trying hard to answer everything. I am sure that he’s under a lot of stress right now and posted something before counting to 10. When you’re under a lot of stress, you should always count to 10. I’d be unemployed if I didn’t do that.
Still, I’m shocked how some people with extraordinarily good reputations (the Bioshock gang, Stardock) have suddenly seen the Internet turn on them in a matter of days and have seen their status go straight from ‘angels’ to ‘demons’ with no in between.
That’s the Internet, I guess.
Anyway, I really hope that Elemental gets sorted out, because I really, really want to play a game like that.
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I’ve seen Wardell lose his temper and flip out a number of times, frequently with the “you guys are just too stupid to talk to now I see something I must attend to over there!”.
He does try to reach out to people more than the average CEO/developer/whatever, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t act like a bipolar asshole on a regular basis. That, combined with releasing an unfinished product that violates many of the “rights” that he claims gamers have (and criticizes other developers for not following) is the reason why people have “turned” on him.
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I agree
And this is coming for someone widely considered troll and hater.
I also have the game. And while it has its problems , its far away from being catastrophic or unplayable.
With several patches and its potential for mods , it could become real classic.
But this wont happen
Internet practically killed this game. Its new hip to hate game. And reviewers love this.
To write bad reviews and not get burned by angry fanboys. Its a great opportunity for them to show they are “unbiased” and “objective”
This way the game will be unprofitable and there will be just minimal support.
The end.
Same thing happened with Alpha Protocol. It was so burned by reviews that many people didnt even want to try it.
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Yeah Lobo, and, err… APB.
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Elemental was supposed to be the flagship product to launch their steam-like DRM/Store/Online mluti-player deal. Wonder what that thing’s fate will be. If Elemental is dead in the water for now, their overlay will have so little uptake that it’ll seriously suffer.
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maybe they’ll go broke and have to release all their games on steam lol
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I’m on both sides of the fence on this one. It’s absolutely not ready for release, both in terms of bugs and design stuff like the UI and “tutorial”. They’ve obviously pushed it out to get in ahead of Civ V. Understandable from a short term business perspective but terrible from a marketing or long term customer satisfaction perspective. Stardock/Brad are doing themselves no favours by claiming it’s ready for release. But on the other hand if you can get past the problems and are willing to put the work in to understand the mechanics it’s a really, really cool game. I’m perfectly willing to wait for them to provide the patches post-release as I know I’ll be putting a lot of time into this game over the next year and beyond. But I fear it’s going to do Stardock an awful lot of damage in the meantime. IT’s a terrible shame that two of the companies producing some of the most interesting PC games around (the other being Paradox) seem to be shooting themselves in the foot like this.
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OUCH! Just OUCH!
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This from Tom F is dead on:
“I’m certain Stardock will fix Elemental. They may even keep working on it until it’s as good as their last game, Galactic Civilizations 2. But putting junk like this in a box and charging money for it is not okay, however rapidly you try and patch it afterwards. It punishes you for being a fan, it punishes you for buying on day one, it punishes you for pre-ordering, and it punishes you for having faith that a great company like Stardock wouldn’t ask you to pay for a game until it’s fit to be played”
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@Ginger Yellow – Yeah, that’s about right really. Fans will just have to wait and see what happens in the future. I wonder if a big apology in the near future regarding the state of the game would make the situation better or worse?
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I think they rushed Elemental due to 2 things: the shelf-space issue they`ve discussed before, and Civ V. How can they compete with the biggest TBS this year, if not to beat them to retail.
The sad bit is that this was actually supposed to be out either earlier this year or last year (can anyone else remember…) I believe. So for Elemental to be in this shape at this time is pretty crazy.
As for the bill of rights… perhaps they`re working on a new one that says We`ll release our games when we want, how we want! Buy them anyway, puny humans!
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They didn’t rush it. Day 0 patches have been the norm for Stardock since GalCiv II, It’s their “DRM but we’re DRM free honest” trick. The game comes out with no DRM on the disk, but there’ll be a sizeable patch available only via Impulse to encourage people to buy and register rather than pirate.
And they’ve had a timeline since the initial beta of what was added when. Day 0 (1.05) should be the completion of the basic game, there should be a huge content update in thirty days or so with a bunch of new quests and the like, and a second large update scheduled at sixty days down the line.
Although the PCG article did make me chuckle “stay away from the boxed copy”. If you’re in Europe or Asia, you have no choice.
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PCG say ‘stay away’ fairly generically enough to warrant your comment ‘stretching the truth’ at best. Are you finding the disappointment hard to take?
Having hovered over this purchase for a whole torturous week before release, (and residing in Europe), I can say, the box is available in Europe, just not on the shelf. But really, who cares, a release is a release in these digitally downloadable days.
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Stardock really have turned to crap over the past few years. It’s a shame that they’re being lead by such a tosser. They’ve had some good ideas, were once customer-focussed and Impulse wasn’t a bad client before they completely withdrew support for regions outside North America (known collectively as THAR BE DRAGONS). So yeah, just leave them to their own devices now. They ain’t worth the attention.
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Maybe Stardock should throw in the towel on the whole PC games business and stick with superficial windows utilities; they never released a bill of rights about those.
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This is ridiculous. the gamers bill of rights is still there at:
http://www.gamersbillofrights.com/
Exactly the same place Stardock advertises it and actually tells people on the forums. Brad himself has linked it in posts for people asking for a refund who have then asked for one and got it. Come on, I like RPS and enjoy reading it as one of the few relatively decent gaming news sites, but really?
Furthermore, have you actually read the drivel people are spewing? Contradiction to rule 2 my butt. The game is playable and fun for some, and a complete package for a game even if people want more (myself included). People have a right to complain and make their own opinions known, but anyone who claims its “unfinished” when it clearly isn’t deserves a swift kick in the butt and absolutely no respect from a rational human being.
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Fanboy much?
Quoted from the very site you link to…
Surely that pretty much describes what is going on. There are serious technical defects/shortcomings in the game and the players are raising concerns about it. The fact that Stardock are saying ‘well don’t buy our games then’ smacks of arrogance and proof that the ‘bill’ was just a PR exercise.
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@Optimaximal
Wow, see, you’re just proving the point. No where in there did I identify myself as a fanboy nor hint at such. I identified Elemental had problems, even specifically mentioned I wanted more out of it which implies I’m not happy. Yet I get labeled a fanboy.
On top of that you didn’t even address the fact that RPS is posting about something that is completely not true.
Finally, could you honestly defend it as “unfinished”? I mean outside anonymous internet ranting? Because in some countries you can take that issue to court. Have fun with that one.
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Sad to say I agree with you, Nessin. And it isn’t a matter of fanboyism — I really couldn’t care much about Stardock compared to any other developer. The game does have some (big) problems, but I was quite surprised how much the first two patches, both released the same day, had an impact on the game. My last game has been going quite well, with all the different systems working in tandem much better.
There are still stutters, defiances of logic, a bad tactical combat system, etc., but overall I’m fairly pleased with the purchase.
Also: @Optimaximal: Sure, there is a disparity there that could be considered a tergiversation of their Bill of Rights, but it’s also a departure from journalistic principles to indict Stardock of removing the Bill of Rights when they haven’t. That’s what Nessin is complaining at there.
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@Nessin – Interesting. But it is gone from there press page, or at least, it’s semi gone. If you search for bill of rights you see the link, but it takes you to that blank page. Something odd seems to be going on. That said, I think Quintin’s post needs a bit of altering to reflect this. It’s very suggestive of dirty doings at the moment, and that might be premature.
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@Nessin
Well, seeing as your entire post came off (in my eyes at least) as a rant directed at RPS because they were reporting an opinion on a game that was at odds to your opinion, then I’d say it comfortably fits the ‘fanboy’ definition.
The fact that huge swathes of the game have been released incomplete fits the ‘unfinished’ definition quite clearly. The fact that the entire launch and public perception of the game hinged on a large day-0 patch landing successfully amongst a perfect storm of internet opinion, retailers who consistently break street dates and a management team who cannot take criticism was doomed to fail from the start.
@The Innocent
I guess everyone can agree to disagree about what Nessin was saying, but the site linked to is a completely separate site to where Stardock initially hosted it and where Quinns was presumably referring to.
I wasn’t even aware of a separate site existing, but then it’s obviously no longer in Stardock’s interest to publicise it.
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@Optimaximal – I don’t think that’s entirely reasonable. I could label you an RPS fanboy because your post came off to me somewhat as an angry rant in response to Nessin posting her opinion of Quintin’s post which is at odds with your opinion of Quintin’s post.
As far as the game being unfinished goes, multiplayer isn’t up yet because of the early release, but aside from that can you highlight which ‘vast swathes’ of the game are incomplete? I agree the release is somewhat disappointing, but I wouldn’t call it a complete disaster.
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Have a read of this one: http://bit.ly/dyJCy4
These are the issues people, including me, are having with the 1.05.16 version, two patches since the release version — the one that hit the shelves, which doesn’t include a tutorial, a faction editor (a promised release feature), or multiplayer.
Don’t forget that multiplayer is currently switched off; the devs are planning to unlock it in an update in a week’s time. Furthermore, multiplayer will not include tactical battles. The devs state that they’ve made this decision because they want the game to go competitive.
I would have felt less ripped off had I spent those fifty bucks on some Nigerian scammer.
AIM out.
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@Wilson
Stop playing devils advocate. My first post, (apart from the admittedly crass ‘Fanboy much’ comment), simply pointed out what the whole article essentially revolves around – that Stardock broke their own ‘don’t release an unfinished game’ rule.
I’ve no care for or intention of playing Elementals as I don’t have the time for 4X games, but when Stardock went on a PR charge a while back trying to imprint this Bill of Rights on other developers to match their ‘consumer-friendly’ practices, it just makes them look like the joke they are.
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@HYPERPOWERi – Fair enough. I mentioned multiplayer above (not good I accept). At least there are devs in that thread gathering information to try and fix the problem. I believe tactical battles are now going to be added to multiplayer in future because of demand, I’m pretty sure there is a faction editor now (though it doesn’t work with Empires yet, though there is a workaround) and the current campaign is intended to act as a tutorial (from what I’ve heard it doesn’t do a great job of it, but there you go).
And there are explanations for some of the things you mention on the forums (e.g. the multiplayer delay and the faction editor) which at least shows that someone cares enough to explain what they’re doing. So there are bugs, I’m not sure if it counts as completely unfinished. I know it isn’t perfect, I just don’t think it’s as bad as some people are making out.
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@Optimaximal – Sorry, I just dislike the term fanboy. Also, I think there are mitigating circumstances here. The retailers breaking the release date led to the early release of a buggy version of the game. I think the early release was a bad decision in hindsight, but the motives were good (to stop pre-ordering customers from getting the game later than some people buying at retail). It’s true that you’ll always hear the people complaining more than the people who are fine, so it’s difficult for anyone to judge how complete or incomplete the game is.
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@Optimaximal – Also, do you dislike Stardock for some reason? I liked GalCiv2 and Sins of a Solar Empire, and the post release support GalCiv 2 got. They make some games that aren’t so mainstream, so that’s why I defend them here. If you don’t much care about Elemental, what’s your interest in all this (that’s not meant as an attack, I’m just curious)?
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@Wilson
It’s still a game that I intend to hang on to because of what it’ll likely become.
Wardell stated that they will continue to update the AI to make better use of boats for example.
I did read about the inclusion of tactical battles in multiplayer in the future and I’m aware that the faction editor is now partially implemented. It’s just not a finished game by any standards, except Wardell’s own.
I’m sure there would be much less anger among the gamers if it wasn’t for Stardock’s rather pretentious Bill of Rights business.
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@HYPERPOWERi – That’s what I’m hoping too. And yeah, they’ve scored a massive PR own goal with the combination of the Gamer’s Bill of Rights, certain of Wardell’s comments, and the extremely rough release of the game. I’d argue that it’s more horribly unpolished more than incomplete, but it would really just be semantics. I’m looking at it in terms of degrees. But yes, it is incomplete I suppose. I just don’t want to admit that because I think people are overreacting. It’s incomplete, but it’s not quite as serious as that sounds. In my opinion anyway.
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Honestly, the biggest downer for me at the moment is the poor performance.
Right now it appears that Elemental does not use the GPU to render 3D objects at all; it relies on the CPU instead. The devs have stated that this is a bug. I don’t know if it affects all hardware configurations. Some people apparently have no issues with the frame rate at all. Hard for me to judge. A friend of mine pre-ordered the game too, and he has the same problem.
Here’s a quote from the relevant thread: Just checked as well, Elemental doesn’t get a performance boost when I switched my Intel 2.8GHz QC to single affinity, nor is it using my ATI 5800 2GB graphics card at all. While Elemental is running, ATI Control Center reports 0% GPU activity.
I can only really play using the cloth map.
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I’ve got nothing against Stardock as a games producer or even a company that has made a large deal of wealth by simply hacking uxtheme…
What I detest is the way the company has used a consumer-friendly PR stunt (the Bill of Rights) to attempt to curry favour with the industry, only to then reneg on multiple components of the list through many PR disasters. Brad Wardell is a duplicitous marketing guy who also acts like the best friend of his customer whilst it suits him.
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The version of the game that most people played was infact a beta build. Stardock branched off their codebase three weeks ago and labeled one as “Gold” and sent it off to the distribution centers for packaging. The other branch they have been working on relentlessly for the past three weeks. THIS version was what we were supposed to see when we first received the game. The fact that retailers jumped the gun meant that far more people played the 1.00 version that were intended (really only those without internet should have received this version).
Now that we are on 1.05 after 48 hours, many of the issues I’ve heard people complaining about have been resolved (and have probably been resolved for weeks).
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Yup. PC Gamer seems to have went horribly downhill since I last read it,
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Tom Chick, however, had made similar comments and he had been playing the Gold version.
Regardless, why didn’t they ship the Gold version to all their customers if it was ready?
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Tom Chick has mainly been having issues understanding the game, which is fair enough. There’s a difference between criticising the game on it’s actual flaws and factually inaccurate reporting.
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@Sobric – They may have done. After Beta 4 the development of the game split two ways, one became gold, the other became ‘day 0′. Day 0 is the newest and best version, so the gold (which might have been the one released early, I’m not sure) is not as good/stable as day 0, which is now out. The intention was that gold would be what you’d get on retail disks, and then you could download the day 0 patch immediately after installing it, but since some street retailed broke the retail date they released it for digital download early, before the day 0 patch was ready.
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@Sobric
That’s completely disingenuous. Tom Chick has being posting about his concerns about how Elemental communicates information to the player, not about these ‘issues’ you speak of.
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I was playing with it the last 2 days. The “pre-release” on Impulse 1-day earlier crashed, a lot. A whole lot. This was, clearly, not done right.
The patch next day, or what it would be the actual release, seems to be stable. Seems, at least for me.
The game is not looking up to be what I expected it to be, but not an absolute disaster or an “early beta” at all. Just… lacking… clarity? Engagement? A bit of polish? I dont know, I havent advance enough to see it in detail (stuck in a permanent 100 turns then scratch it I forgot to to this cycle, but thats me and all Civ likes games).
But really, Wardell should learn to shut the fuck up, or find somebody to manage the PR for him.
I gave Stardock my money MONTHS ahead because I liked their policies, their Bill of Rights, and the genre. In equal measure. I felt they deserved the support.
His comments make me thing I was completly wrong. I understand he is very involved in the game and has to be very hurt by bad reactions. But this is stupid, inmature, and basically says “you know what, if you gave us money cause we cared about you, think again”.
All because instead of having a cool head and managing this as “yes, I see there are problems. Not as many as people say, but I understand it looks bad. Will do better next time, and you can bet we are fixing it”, he decided to basically tell everybody STFU. Well, of course I’m STFU; I’m not going to give you more money for more games, Wardell, as I did by supporting your project way before it was done. Maybe Ill buy it months after, if its good. Way to shut yourself in the foot of the preordering money, which for a small company needing funds to get projects going has to hurt. I’m STFU; Im no longer saying “Stardock is one of us and deserves your support!”.
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That’s probably because he was sick of having to explain it to idiots who didn’t read the announcements.
The pre-release was just that, a pre-release. They took the gold version, backported a bunch of stuff out of the release patch and released that, stating at the same time that a) it wasn’t the release version and b) they expected it to have bugs.
Yesterday the Day 0 patch went live, which when installed will bring the disk versions and the digital version to the same point, and is the “release”, as Mr Wardell also stated a few times, the game would be launched on the 24th. The early access was given because some retailers broke the street date and a lot of people were complaining about pre-ordering when they’d have been better off going to Bestbuy.
Unless you bought the game from a store yesterday you’ve not played the “release” version. If you bought digitally, you’ve never had access to the release version – the Day 0 patch and hotfix will bring you to the same code thread as the retail version.
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Thats not an excuse for his comments. First, they shot themselves in the foot – if the pre-release was mean to be a gesture to people that preordered, it backfired by being so buggy.
And given that, and taking into account I’m well aware that dealing with the internet public in general is dealing with millions of soiled man-babies crying, he shoots himself AGAIN in the foot with the STFU comment.
After the first screw up, the wise tactic would have been to apologize to the sane members of the audience and ignore the cretins. Not doing so he has hurt his company image, precisely in the points that gave him support.
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@Archonsod – Oh, I thought the retail versions were gold, and the day 0 patch was just that, a day 0 patch.
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Archonsod: the Day 0-patched “release” version of the game was even more broken than the pre-release version. They made some big changes to how combat works, and in the process broke the combat system entirely and had to re-patch the whole game this morning. I wish that what you are saying was true, and that they had a polished and working version of the game waiting in the wings, in the form of the Day 0 update, but that’s simply not the case. With the Day 0 patch in place, and the patch to the Day 0 patch, the game is still a mess.
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@Archonsod – Oh, I thought the retail versions were gold, and the day 0 patch was just that, a day 0 patch.
The retail (boxed) is gold, the digital distribution skipped the gold version. The pre-release was based on the same code as gold, but they backported a few features from the Day 0 patch into it.
“Archonsod: the Day 0-patched “release” version of the game was even more broken than the pre-release version. They made some big changes to how combat works, and in the process broke the combat system entirely and had to re-patch the whole game this morning.”
Erm, hyperbole much? There was a problem with thumbnail corruption which they fixed, and the pre-built archer templates didn’t have enough action points to fire their bows. Given this problem didn’t affect archer units designed yourself (unless you did it deliberately) and only affected archers I’m not sure how this constitutes “the combat system being broken entirely”.
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Play the game and then have the balls to come here and state that its finished/fun/playable…
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It looks finished enough, now. Or at least, it does not crash every second game as previously.
Fun is another thing, still trying to find out if it is.
It may very well not be a good game, or it may be. But telling people not to buy your games after delivering it in a way many buyers could not actually play IS not a good move, at all.
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It isn’t the greatest game I’ve played at launch but with the Day 0 patch I am having quite a bit of fun with it and have yet to crash.
Stardock had also made it quite clear for quite some time that the Day 0 patch was to be their proper release (and review) version but retail vendors broke the street date and thus we now have much complaining about a beta release/bugs/stability. It wasn’t an ideal situation and in hindsight Stardock could have done things differently but that is how it all unfolded.
But feel free to make a blanket statement for all gamers about Elemental….
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I’ve played about 8 hours of it. (half and half 1.00 and 1.01, campaign and sandbox respectively)
It is:
a) not finished
b) fun
c) playable for an hour or so before it slows to a crawl
As for preview vs Day 0, bear in mind that Stardock are still soliciting bug reports from 1.00/1.01 for major issues like the memory leaks, so it seems unlikely these were identified and fixed in Gold/Day 0.
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Finally played my first game to completion, and yes it’s fun, playable and finished. It does start to chug a bit in the late game but Civ 4 does the same thing on large maps, so rather than blame Stardock for that I’ll point the finger at my lack of RAM.
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It is not finished, but hardly what people are claiming as “disastrous”.
It is fun… quite fun actually.
I played it for multiple hours…
There are bugs, it is not perfect, but still good.
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Civ IV does chug a lot in the late game but crucially (and at least in my experience) only during the AI’s turns. Elemental at the moment chugs during your own turn, when trying to move units and so on. It’s a big difference.End turn chug is more or less inevitable for games like this (see EU3, Total War, Football Manager). But this is clearly a programming issue – as demonstrated by the debug files that have been posted on the Elemental forums.
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The only chug I get on my turns is when moving units, which I suspect is the pathfinding being worked out. Accessing any of the other windows et al all remains smooth the whole game (which is an improvement from the beta, it’d take it ages to open the merchant window).
I’m going to go crush one of the Empires to see if it’ll lessen the load and remove the chug. Which is about as good an excuse for a cassus belli as I can think of at the moment.
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It’s fun, playable and as finished as some other games I’ve bought. I was patient enough to wait for day-0 patch to reserve judgement. It’s stable for me, with no crashes. Tech trees are cool. I have yet to find a place in the game where there is a big hole where “unfinished” stuff supposedly would go. I think the UI could use some improvement, but it’s complete in the sense that everything can be accomplished with it.
Spoiled internet trolls, some who openly admit to not playing the game or never intending to, have some warped ideas about what a PC game should be if you ask me.
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“I think the UI could use some improvement, but it’s complete in the sense that everything can be accomplished with it.”
Well, sure, but that’s what the term “feature complete” is for. And generally speaking feature complete occurs between alpha and beta.
I don’t mean to hate on the game. As I’ve state elsewhere on the thread, I’m really enjoying what I’ve played of the game, which is already many, many hours. And I’m sure Stardock will continue patching it in the months, if not years, ahead and it will get better and better. And I expect to be playing for a long time. But, even setting aside the crashes (I’ve had only one if you don’t count the Alt-Tab bug) it’s really not possible to call this a finished product. It’s a dense strategy game which does extraordinarily little to explain itself – see Tom Chick’s diaries for some concrete examples, but I’m sure you know what I mean. Demigod was criticised for similar issues, but it was a paragon of clarity compared to Demigod – even with the encyclopedia and the manual, there’s really important stuff that’s left for the player to work out their own. And not in a good way. And then, like I say, there’s the serious slowdown issue.
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Damn, that kind of awkward. It’s like when Google once said they would “do no evil” and then they went of and did just that.
I’m kinda sad because it looked like a decent game. I never took the bait over Demigod. There was just to much noise about bugs and high learning curve but Elemental seemed like it might be a return to form. Obviously I was wrong.
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As an addon to my last post I forgot to point out two things:
1) The Gamers Bill of Rights site isn’t new, its been up since shortly after it the “Bill” was first published.
2) Elemental does have problems. Its UI is a mess with regards to instruction people on how to do things (although its so pathetically easy that’s a cop out excuse but I realize that doesn’t the change the fact that any game SHOULD have a better definition of the UI), and its certainly has game-breaking bugs for some people.
But I can play it just fine, as long as a whole bunch of other people, so its not a universal problem. I even have an ATI video card and I can freely alt-tab out of the game which people will tell you is still impossible. And as I mentioned, you can find quite a few people that actually enjoy the game right now. Hell, I’m even critical of the game because I DON’T ENJOY it right now, and yet somehow I end up as an advocate for it in other sites because you get junk like this. Respected people posting blatantly false information and whiners who go overboard with comments like “unfinished” and “beta”, when it isn’t by any definitions of the word.
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Yeah, what Nessin said.
I’m completely confounded with the current situation. I understand people had very high expectations regarding Elemental, but that doesn’t excuse Tom Francis and now Quintin Smith unleashing the internet echo chamber behind a thin veneer of video game journalism.
To be blunt, they both should be ashamed about this level of lazy journalism. I wouldn’t normal say this, lazy unprofessional journalism is rife everywhere you look these days, perhaps particularly in video games. But Tom Francis and RPS are usually two shining examples of how things should be done in a sea of iniquity.
Elemental is not broken. That quote from Brad Wardell is unfortunate, but taken out of context. And the gamers bill of rights is exactly where it’s been for months.
And I say this as someone who’s about as far removed from a Stardock fanboy as it’s possible to be, if anything I’m a Tom Francis and RPS fanboy!
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“To be blunt, they both should be ashamed about this level of lazy journalism. I wouldn’t normal say this, lazy unprofessional journalism is rife everywhere you look these days, perhaps particularly in video games. But Tom Francis and RPS are usually two shining examples of how things should be done in a sea of iniquity.”
I completely disagree. Games journalists are way too kind and have been for decades. This has enabled developers to get away with a sloppy ‘ship it now, fix it later’ attitude that we see all over the place. I think it would be prudent if you had as big a problem with lazy game developing as you seem to have with “lazy journalism”.
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I agree the tone of this article is artificially inflammatory. There’s plenty of legitimate problems with Elemental without looking for false controversies. Please rewrite the article and the headline, it just looks bad now that someone pointed out the bill of rights website.
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Err, Tom was reporting directly on his own experience and also included some information from others. The primary source was him playing the game on two different PCs. Both he and Quinns offered a write of reply to Stardock. It’s not their fault that Wardell decided to use his right of reply to make Stardock look even worse than they did already.
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I also recall buying Sins Of A Solar Empire a few days before Christmas about two years ago shortly after Impulse was launched. Brad sent all his staff on holiday and the servers died. Basically it took over a week to resolve the server issues and Brad spent the time attacking people for stating that maybe they should have had one or two staff member around in case of issues like that.
Sadly Stardock is amateur hour at the OK corral.
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I was having severe performance issues with the game and was disappointed with its early release – however, the Day 0 patch has taken care of all my concerns and I’m having a lot of fun with it.
Download the Day 0 patch and start a new game. It’s much better.
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It seems glaringly obvious that this has been squeezed out before CIV 5 comes along and smashes all hopes of its sales out the window.
I would beg to differ personally, as I think Elemental could have released perfectly well alongside Civ 5, maybe even thriving off it with the boost in TBS game’s profiles, and the alternative theme.
Sadly, seems they didnt want to wait :(
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I’ve played about 6 hours so far without crashes or major issues and have actually been having a ton of fun. Game has some rough edges, but nothing that’s really out of the ordinary for a new game release. I guess YMMV.
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Am I the only person who’s game doesn’t crash? touch wood.
There just isn’t enough feedback on the interface/during gameplay/at all.
Also it took me 8 starts to work out that changing the difficulty to challenging does not alter the difficulty
of the AI. You have to change the difficulty of each AI individually on the next screen. Obviously.
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To repeat, the version you got 1 day earlier if you preordered crashed so regularly as to be not-playable. In fact for me crashed every time I tried to reload an autosaved game.
Is the game “finished” as in “it has perfect UI, an incredible smooth learning curve with everything well documented and visible, challenging AI and kick-ass strategic gameplay? Dunno, probably not a single game is ever “finished” in that sense. Or it may be finished and not be good, who knows. I’m having a bit of fun, not much, but probably cause I need to learn more, which the game doesnt really gives its 100% in helping me, but hey…
But if you got the 1-day earlier release you would be well-justified to get an initial WTF reaction.
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Stardock was given two dates for shipping by the major retailers. Late August, or early February. They choose August, and here we are. There no attempt at cowering below Civ V’s might.
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“Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state”
You have the right to “demand” they no where stated you have the right to “expect” or that they guarantee 100% that all games released would be 100% done did they? If so, you have a gripe, if not, well you still have the right to “demand” a fully finished game all you want.
Go at it.
:)
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http://www.gamersbillofrights.com/
The GBR is still up, where they intended it to be. Gunslingerbara is a SD employee, and it leads to SD forums.
I think this is just a case of a missing/eaten forum post, at a time when SD is taking heavy (though fair) criticism of a rushed game. Here’s why Stardock rushed this (my interpretation some)
Stardock and Firaxis had a close relationship. They even beta tested GC2/Civ 4 for each other. Earlier this year, 2K forces Firaxis to make Civ V a Steamworks exclusive, which was a pretty big blow to Impulse. Because of this, Elemental was pushed up. However, due to the size of Stardock, they could only get retail space in August and Feburary- so the game got rushed.
BTW, the game isn’t as horribly unplayable as people claim- it’s got major issues, but Stardock will fix them, they always have in the past. I think the issues are in line with what most other companies put out as day 0 patches. On top of that, the build most people got early wasn’t the full version- due to the street date getting broken, and SD felt it was better to give pre-orders early access due to this. (Ironically, this caused a few bugs to be fixed)
I think SD is taking some deserved heat, but claiming this I think is overkill/unfair.
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Ultimately, what people played a few days ago was what people got if they bought the retail version. Since that’s the “gold” version, you’ll expect that most of the obvious bugs should be fixed. This seems to not be the case, hence the brouhaha and the Elemental Forums doing the Steam Forums Routine. While it seems that the initial patches seem to have fixed some of the problems, my confidence has been shaken, so I’ll sit out.
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No it’s not. The only way to play the retail version is to buy it in a box. The version you got a couple of days ago was not the retail – the post they made announcing it’s availability did state this.
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Ultimately, what people played a few days ago was what people got if they bought the retail version and not connected it with Impulse. Since that’s the “gold” version, you’ll expect that most of the obvious bugs should be fixed. This seems to not be the case, hence the brouhaha and the Elemental Forums doing the Steam Forums Routine. While it seems that the initial patches seem to have fixed some of the problems, my confidence has been shaken, so I’ll sit out.
The GOG forums will have a field day with this.
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Gah. Double post.
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The Gamers Bill of Rights is always where it has been.
http://www.gamersbillofrights.com/
Not sure where the reference comes that it was removed from the site. I do see a news item that is coming up blank but those are just news items that sometimes get shuffled for one reason or another.
The v1.05 update went out very early this morning, and the developers are working pretty much non-stop to track down any other issues that customers are reporting.
-Spencer
Stardock
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Whilst there’s a LOT of griping, I think it’s worth remembering that people only gripe about games which appeal to them but don’t quite work for some reason – e.g. people WANT to play them.
If a game is terminally broken, people will just move on – so the noise is a sign that there’s a game worth playing in there BUT that it’s nowhere near complete even as of the Day 0 (1.05) Patch.
It’s not just PC-related bugs and crashes, major chunks of the gameplay are broken in spectacular ways. Yesterdays patch, for example, allowed someone to acquire all the racial benefits simply by toggling the race selector a few times (and presumably that’s saved into their game from now on) – that’s a sign there’s been little or no testing done on the most basic areas of the game!?
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This post disappointed me. I usually expect a higher degree of journalistic integrity and objectivity from RPS, but…
It seems like the most opinionated comments are from people who have not played the game or had any experience with it at all. There is also a confusion about the state of the game. Several physical retailers broke the street date which then forced Stardock to push a pre-release version to Beta-testers and preorders. Two patches have been applied since then bringing the product up to its day-O release which is the final product save for post-release support. It the game perfect or flawless…probably not, but Stardock is very transparent with their development/release intentions and they support their games for years. Brad may not come off well sometimes, but I doubt that I would be personal friends with a lot of developers…I don’t base my evaluations of games on developer personalities and PR missteps. If I did I probably wouldn’t play that many games.
As for me I pre-ordered the Limited Edition of Elemental months ago. I am going to wait until I receive the box and physical media, install the game, and apply whatever updates exist at that point. Then I will play the game and cultivate my own opinions on the mechanics, polish, and existing state of completion.
OR
I guess I could jump on the RAGE bandwagon and spew some hate at an independent company that has a Gamers Bill of Rights (although the RPS staff couldn’t find it) and express my frustration at two games I have never bought/played (Demigod & Elemental). Look I know there are legitimate complaints, but give the game and the developer an honest chance. The Elemental developer journals are extremely transparent about the whole process and they often outline specifics about what exactly will be in each given release and update, what bugs exist, and what the community should expect in the near future.
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Seeing as this is almost exactly what happened with Demigod, surely it’s safe to say Stardock ‘had’ their chance?
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It was released before it was ready yes, the day-0 patch, which is the ‘finished product’ just came out.
The REASON it was released early was because retailers broke the launch day date, and Stardock decided in order to be fair to all their customers they would release it to everyone and patch it to the full experience on launch day.
Brad was being far fairer than he had to be. Do some bloody research
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And how exactly did retailers get hold of a game that Stardock hadn’t finished developing?
I’m sorry, but fanboyism is no excuse for completely disabling your brain.
If the retailers *had* the game, it is because Stardock had given them a version of the game to sell. If that version wasn’t actually playable, it is hardly the retailers fault, *even* if they broke the launch date. It’s not like wine or cheese, the launch version wasn’t going to magically get better if only it’d been left alone for another week.
Another week *in development* might have made a difference, sure. But if the retailers had the game, then the version Stardock was going to release was already set in stone.
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Read my lips: That Does Not Excuse His Behaviour Against Customers. Even if his dog died or his car crashed.
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@Risingson: but what if his dog crashed his car?
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@jalf
Fair enough.
However, Stardock leans on Impulse and on a model of constant updates through digital downloads. Sure someone who is playing the boxed game and has no internet connection is not receiving the best experience and that is lamentable.
But, I believe that Stardock is expecting/encouraging most customers to apply updates as they roll out. I don’t know what boxed version of a game was perfect without at least one applied update.
This is 2010 where updates, patches, and additional content are readily available and easy to download. Even retail console games require updates/patches at this point.
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Yes, but that “Impulse model” doesnt save them here either.
Lets, again, forget about the fun-finished issue and Civ rushing and all that.
Stardock puts up a “Bill of Rights” saying you deserve a finished (as in, it works) game
Stardock sends to retailers a version that is not like that at all for huge numbers of players, betting the automatic patching on Impulse will make that disappear.
Retailers break date of release
Stardock then sends digital preorders the same non-working version, multiplying the “I guess this is not going to be invisible after all” effect, on a misguided faireness attempt.
Shitstorm happens.
Wardell tells people not to buy their games after this whole set of Stardock failures.
Is clear this was not the wisest set of decisions on Wardell’s history.
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@latro
Except the Bill of Rights says its up the players to make the judgement. Some players have determined the game isn’t unfinished, so therefore it isn’t a unanimous situation to say the game is unfinished. When means we go to a case by case basis. So if one player believes the game is unfinished, and another player doesn’t, what is the recourse? Well the Bill of Rights says a player is entitled to a refund if they don’t like the game and feel it doesn’t function properly. So what does Stardock do? Give Refunds!
I’m not defending Brad’s statement as proper, because he could have been a helluva lot more tactful about it. But I’m curious as to what other possible recourse there could be in this situation where even other players believe the game is finished, rather than just the developer?
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Thats why I’m not entering the whole “Is not fun so it is unfinished” thing.
The Bill of Rights is not a bad decision – hell, I preordered the game in a great deal motivated by that kind of commitment.
I included it on the list because it was clear that shipping a buggy game, pre-release 0-day whatever or not, which they did, no matter the pressure or whatever, was going to hurt them after posting that Bill of Rights, as a set up on how Wardell’s reaction was then even worse. He created the conditions for the fire and then instead of extingishing it decided to douse it in gasoline.
I really hope to see Elemental flourish. I dont know yet if it is good or bad, but I think it looks interesting, and probably is right now as fundamental solid a design as it will ever be. But you bet I was not very pleased with the constant CTDs I got. As I said, the game crashed loading saved games. Thats not “finished” in any sense.
I understand the pressures, situations, all that. Hell, I just shrugged and said “what a pity. Lets wait a few days” (and then tested it the next patch :-P) But after managing all by their own faults to screw up the “first impression”, somebody should have told Wardell to reserve the artillery for another day.
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There’s a massive question here, which is “Does the boxed copy require online activation via Impulse?”
I can accept that online copies got rushed out due to broken street dates and the product was a few days away from ready. I can accept that for retail copies too if it’s a compulsory registration and online update out of the box.
I can’t accept that if the plan was just to ship boxed copies that didn’t say “Internet connection required to register” with a version that was broken. Sure, that won’t effect any of us but it’s not good enough.
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“And how exactly did retailers get hold of a game that Stardock hadn’t finished developing?”
Because if you want a game on a store shelf before the release date you have to ship it before said release date, unless you invent Star Trek style transporter technology?
Stardock have always stated there’d be a Day 0 patch, they’ve also always said they had massive content updates scheduled for the 30 and 60 day mark which would be based in part on player feedback. I fail to see how this is a *bad* thing, personally I like developers to continue enhancing games after I’ve bought them.
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Archonsod says:
Stardock have always stated there’d be a Day 0 patch, they’ve also always said they had massive content updates scheduled for the 30 and 60 day mark which would be based in part on player feedback. I fail to see how this is a *bad* thing, personally I like developers to continue enhancing games after I’ve bought them.
The problem is that not everyone has an internet connection or the knowledge/skills to get the patches. Not everyone that buys this game will be able to go download the Day 0 patch (or any subsequent ones). Think about the kid that gets this game from his grandma, or the soldier in Afghanistan who gets a boxed copy as a gift. The game *as shipped on disk* should be not just “playable”, but a reasonably polished product. (I don’t think many people will argue that the unpatched release version of Elemental is “polished” in any way.)
If this was a console game, that would HAVE to be the case, and I think it’s an abuse of the PC game player base to not provide the same courtesy. This is part of why people keep saying PC gaming is dying. The unspoken part of all this is that the unpolished release is essentially a backdoor way for Stardock to force online-registration DRM while claiming they dont do DRM.
I think that Stardock’s promise to support the game long-term is commendable, but this unpolished release is shooting themselves in the foot. If they couldn’t ship a resonably polished product in the box, then they should have postponed the release to the later slot. No one forced them to ship the game in August; that was their decision. A February launch would have allowed them time to deliver a much more polished product, and since they had promised to support the game post-release anyway, the development costs shouldn’t be that much different.
I really like Stardock and want them to succeed, but this is disappointing. I was really hoping that they’d have learned some lessons from the GC2 release and the Demigod release.
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haha, what’s with the gotcha crap
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Reporting what people say? It’s called journalism.
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you work for a tabloid or something?
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So Stardock now go into the same bucket as the Total War developers – give it 3 months after release then check the forums and purchase if its ready.
Empire really burnt me – the previous releases were like a frog in a slowly heated pot, but ETW was the heat being flipped to max.
/cry
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It was rushed, no denying that, but I’m still having a lot of fun (having waited for a decent fantasy TBS 4X since AOW:SM might’ve had something to do with it…) and find many of the usual criticisms a little ridiculous, at least in their severity.
Sure, some mechanics aren’t the most intuitive and at the moment not properly documented, but if you’re not a complete 4X newb you will understand most (98%?) of the game with no problem. I knew basically nothing (specific) about it beforehand and didn’t have any major problems just jumping right into it.
Also: even 1.00 was playable once you set it to windowed mode to cut down the crashes (had one… every 3 hours or so once I did that).
Also: I really don’t understand the huge deal about “the interface sucks”… apart from a few niggles that need improvements (a few cut off descriptions, cursor not always correctly changing, better descriptions for a few techs, maybe a sortable spellbook and a few more by themselves little things) I thought it was fine. Not OMG NEXT GEN REVOLUTIONARY IMMERSIVE EPIC, but fine.
Way too much overreacting going on – which is even more retarded once you consider that there wasn’t recently and won’t be in the near future a game like it (also and especially considering modding and MP) apart from Civ, which just feels bland, being Civ (although I do love Civ, it’s just that its real world setting is getting increasingly boring as the years go by… also hi Paradox at this point), so for people who like 4X it should be in their own best interest to not go “LOL LOL LOL HATE HATE HATE SUCH CRAP” and turn people away that might even enjoy it how it is and probably would a few weeks down the line.
A little objectivity really couldn’t hurt – yes, it needs more patches, yes, IMHO it has a lot of potential and I do think Stardock will fix it eventually.
Just waiting for the demo in a couple of weeks if you don’t want to pay now and blindly trust instead of nerdraging on the internet won’t kill anyone, probably.
Oh, also: I must say I prefer devs that are sometimes assholes to ones locked away in their ivory towers carefully vetting every syllable they utter for maximal political correctness and PR who you never can directly interact with.
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So, I was considering buying either this or Civ5. Both seemed pretty great and I didn’t know how to decide.
This has made it a lot easier :]
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get victoria2
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Seconded.
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People have been saying (since the beta began) that the A.I was terribly broken, that most gameplay mechanics were not a) implemented correctly b) terribly unbalanced or c) missing.
The response was always “it will be fixed on the final release” ” we have a huge day 0 patch prepared” ” it´s beta”. But guess what, the game that the customer bought from the store, which is what counts, is horribly broken. Even these patches are broken and show little to no Q&A, they mess up the game as much as they fix the issues.
Anyone else remembers Demigod? Its the same shit all over again.
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Cute. Well, if it’s anything like GalCiv2, it’ll be great fun once the second expansion is out. Looking forward to that then.
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Looks like I made a good choice pre-ordering Mafia II and not Elemental. Not that Mafia IIs reviews are glowing but at least it seems to be finished.
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lol
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How long before a civ5 version of the FFH mod is out and renders this game totally pointless?
i’m guessing xmas
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@Seras – If the current version of FFH is anything to go by, they’ll be very different, and I would hope to enjoy both of them :) Assuming Elemental gets the support and patches it needs.
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My experience has been much different than yours. I am playing and enjoying Elemental. The tactical battles work fine… I even use the terrain advantages to win close battles . I am sorry that you are having such a difficult time.
Luxx
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Oh, I think I understand what happened:
1. Stardock had a plan to digitally patch the game into functional form, thereby allowing them to release the buggy version in the box – and get the physical media stuff out of the way early.
2. Contrary to plan, they had to release the digital version early to correspond with broken-street-date physical versions. This is probably where they first really erred… this resulted in a buggy version being available all round for at least a day.
3. The panicked team rushed in, trying to do everything in a day that they had scheduled to do in two or three. In the rush, bugs were made.
4. This is what one might call a bumpy launch. Poor form on Stardock’s part to try to do things the day of release, but I suppose it has to do with their attitude towards deadlines.
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@omicron – That’s the impression I get. A combination of bad luck and poor judgement. I hope the game doesn’t suffer because of this bad launch, because it really has potential.
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PC Gamer’s article was put up a few days too late. Stardock should never have released their Day 0 version as that’s what is getting everyone so up in arms. For the most part, the Day 0 patch and now the first post-launch patch have cleared up most of the issues.
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wardell should hire a someone who knows how to talk to human beings so he can spend all day every day fixing elemental.
he tends to fly off the handle like an fan artist (from a site like deviantart) who just had someone criticize their sonic/tails slash homosex master piece. also forced refund lol what a dick i hope he scrubs valves floors for the rest of his life
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Stardock have always offered a refund if you don’t like the game, even 3rd party stuff bought off Impulse. In fact they’re probably the only retailer who do these days.
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He also has been working like crazy for the past section of forever to get the game done and in shape for the release… Lots of posts at 3 and 4 am from him. Maybe the lack of sleep and people’s over exaggeration finally got to him… sucks to be human.
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“In fact they’re probably the only retailer who do these days.”
nah. many download shops do refunds. gamersgate for one. it’s probably just that the biggest one, steam, never refunds that makes it seem like no one does.
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forced refunds are when brad is so butthurt by a comment you made about demigod he forcibly refunds all your games and bans you. lol brad is such a prick.
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like gives you your money back and takes away all your games because he didn’t like your criticism because he is a thin skined shrimp who loves fox news and is probably compensating for something.
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maybe not all your games but i am not going to find out if it’s just the one you criticized within earshot of brad “the baby” wardell or all of them.
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I waited to play Elemental until I had the Day0 patch (aka version 1.05). I’ve been playing for 10 hours, playing a normal game on a large map, and I’m having a lot of fun :) I didn’t have any crashes in the game at all, and while I noticed a few errors, and have some questions that I couldn’t find answered in the manual, I would still consider this game to be “finished.” I think most (but not all) of the complaints are from people who played before the Day0 patch was released.
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I agree with you, I’ve been playing for about 3 hours and it’s quite good. It seems pretty stable (I didn’t have any crash or error for now) and, although I prefer a TBS style like Heroes of Might and Magic 3, it’s fun.
All the crap thrown to Stardock is unjustified. And I agree with Brad Wardell, if you don’t like the final product, don’t buy it. It’s not rude, it’s just his opinion!
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Err, how are we meant to know if we like it or not without buying and playing it first. There is no demo. Unless Wardell is saying we should pirate it.
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@MrSafin it’s not only his opinion: it’s a statement made by a representative of CEO . I mean, it’s not you, not me: it’s a man who is going against their customers and potential customers, people buying their games.
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The demo should be forthcoming soon.
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/cynical
Of course, an obscure indie game I hadn’t even heard of until today (and I follow RPS) is getting front page coverage on PC Gamer and elsewhere.
It’s not getting positive press, but I’m aware it exists now and it looks interesting enough I’ll keep an eye out for if it ever gets fixed.
It could quite easily have passed me by entirely.
/cynical
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Demigod suffered from a botched launch due to ridiculous amounts of pirated copies and not properly warding off said pirates. But otherwise the game was perfectly fine with no AI issues, a good interface and all gameplay mechanics implemented properly. It took some time for multiplayer to be fixed, but other than that there really wasn’t very much wrong with Demigod at all (except for a few balance issues in very specific situations).
Not quite the same shit as a broken street date, buggy pre-launch version that gets patched to pretty damn good functionality right away, slightly unintuitive UI, poor tutorial, broken faction editor (although easily fixed) and potential AI issues.
The only things these two have in common is that they’re somewhat botched launches and have a lot of people out raging out of all proportions about a game that most of them haven’t even played.
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It’s a small case of Apples vs. Oranges.
Demigod was developed by Gas Powered Games, with Stardock handling publishing, distribution, support, servers and (i guess) future updates.
I think most of what fell over from day 0 was handled by Stardock.
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hmm.. have to say I’m having a blast with this game..
I really like it and there’s a TON of stuff in there.
The first couple of patches (over the last 2 days) have worked wonders for performance and stability. I had a 4-5 hour (ish) game last night without a single issue.
Looking forward to where they take it. The interface could do with some tweaking but in all I like it.
Goodbye.
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So much promises, but no delivery. Just forget this game and play Dominions 3.
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Brad Wardell seems like a dick to me. He’s always seemed insincere.
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I don’t think he is insincere. I think he is just in over his head. When it was just him and a few developer writing Windows skinning software and GalCiv he could cope. Running a large studio and distribution network is beyond his level of management ability. What we are seeing happens all the time in business when a company grows too quickly. He needs to hire a real CEO and step back or he is going to burn through all the goodwill and WindowBlinds money he has left and Impulse will be the first digital distribution network to go titsup within 5 years.
You read it on Rock Paper Shotgun first.
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Unfortunately I don’t think he is insincere. I think he is just in over his head. When it was just him and a few developer writing Windows skinning software and GalCiv he could cope. Running a large studio and distribution network is beyond his level of management ability. What we are seeing happens all the time in business when a company grows too quickly. He needs to hire a real CEO and step back or he is going to burn through all the goodwill and WindowBlinds money he has left and Impulse will be the first digital distribution network to go titsup within 5 years.
You read it on Rock Paper Shotgun first.
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I was annoyed that every time I alt-tabbed the game would crash; ironically these alt tabbings were mostly going to grumble about some of the games failings…
But overall I’m enjoying this game quite a bit, its fun having an RPG + empire builder game rolled into one.
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According to this http://forums.elementalgame.com/392088 they are really trying hard to fix all the issues. And if you really read it, you will notice that Brad is going to sabbatical – maybe he was a little off when he said what he said.
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This was planned for quite some time, he’s said as early as six months ago he planned to take some time off to make some mods for Elemental and work on the AI.
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I shed a tear and went back to Dominions 3.
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I’m the biggest MoM fan in the world, so I got this day 0… So far it seems unbalanced but i have very few bugs. i can agree it doesn’t look great, but frankly, i play Angband, i couldn’t care less.
Personally as they constantly say ‘we are going to work on this for the next two years’, i’m quite happy to buy it now, feed back on what i want changing (The combat damage calculations for example) and see the game improve over time, it’s something that will stay installed for years.
2 days in, now i know what i am doing, it seems a lot of fun, but boy, day 1 was a struggle!
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Come on, RPS, fix the title/summary of this article! I shouldn’t have to read through 100+ comments to find out that the Gamer’s Bill of Rights has definitely not been rescinded by Stardock. I really can’t think of any other time I’ve been annoyed by something on RPS. Wardell definitely has screwed some stuff up here, but this FUD about the missing Bill of Rights is just inflammatory.
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“I’m pretty sure they wanted it out before Civ5… that must have been the big factor in getting it out ASAP without even working multiplayer or battles.”
Well that’s a pretty dumb way of looking at things. MoM != Civ, even if they share some of the same mechanics, and Elemental definitely != Civ 5. Would Carmack push Doom 4 out the door early if Valve announced they were releasing Episode 3 next week?
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Why oh why does reply only work sometimes? sigh…
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I’m playing Elemental War of Magic and is perfectly playable, with some bugs and still not multiplayer, but not amused for that. I like the game and I know it will be improved in next days/weeks, so, not problem for me.
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Moral of the story: Don’t put an unfinished game in a box and sell it. Day 0 patch or not.
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I think there is a legitimate question here, of to what extent the game is unfinished and to what extent it is just not very good. That may be confusing the issue here, with some believing that the game has potential to be more than it is, ergo it is unfinished.
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It’s a real damn shame a simple non quote like that would be taken so out of context and posted all over the web denouncing Wardell as this egotistical and hostile individual. Mind you, from a developer who was kind enough to dedicate his time and talk and elaborate on the game recently released.
Not only that, no one mentions the incredible hostility directed at Wardell, which provoked the above quote. If you’re interested, here’s the thread in question;
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=48528&page=82
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It’s a real damn shame a simple quote like that would be taken so out of context and posted all over the web denouncing Wardell as this egotistical and hostile individual. Mind you, from a developer who was kind enough to dedicate his time and talk and elaborate on the game recently released.
Not only that, no one mentions the incredible hostility directed at Wardell, which provoked the above quote. If you’re interested, here’s the thread in question;
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=48528&page=82
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This reads like a sensational destructoid piece. This isn’t what I come to RPS for. Please fix it, it’s intentionally misleading. The Gamer’s Bill of Rights website is by Stardock yet you make it appear as if Stardock removed every trace of the Bill of Rights from their servers but people could bypass that by visiting “its own” website, which is still by Stardock, so obviously they didn’t try anything like that.
As for the game’s state:
August 20th – retailers break street date
August 21st/22nd – Stardock asks their employees to come in on the weekend to in order to release the game early for those who purchased digitally
August 22nd – Stardock releases the “Gold” (this gold version is the one that is sent to stores – it is sent before it is in a completed state with the intention of releasing a “Day 0” patch which addresses bugs they were working on between the time where the game is printed and it’s release date) version to all those who beta tested and pre-ordered as to not punish those people who have been loyal followers of the game and helped to improve it.
August 24th – Official release day, and the day 0 patch is released which fixes many of the bugs and adds much of the polish that was lacking (and complained about) in the Gold version.
So yes, the game is more unfinished than usual for Stardock titles but it was partly done to better serve their customers, and anyone who isn’t satisfied with the state of the game can still ask, and receive, a refund. Where exactly is the problem then? Get your refund, get over it.
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Ok guys, I need to chime in here: unlike most of you (it seems) I’m actually playing the game and it seems fine to me. I haven’t noticed anything in it that breaks the gameplay, so maybe you should ease up a bit… :-)
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I agree that they were working very hard over the last month to bring us the Day0 patch. But in my opintion, this does not diminish the validity of most of the criticism aimed at Stardock and/or Elemental. It does not matter if you call your patch “Day0″ or “Release version” it is – in all honesty – a post-release patch. The gold or final version of Elemenal, the version that was deemed release-worthy, was finished about a month ago, and that is the version we got two days ago via Impulse and that is the version everyone who is going to buy a boxed copy will receive. And if they think, this version was good enough, they will also have to accept people to judge the game based on it. From my point of view, the game was in a very poor state two days ago, and I have absolutely no issues at all, that publications such as RPS or PC Gamer are warning their readers.
I do not think that there is no merrit in trying to defend the initial release of Elemental because it has really been in a very poor state even tough the first couple of patches have made it a better game. Maybe it is even more tragic, because this is coming from Stardock who previously declared how much they value their “Gamers bill of rights”. In case of Elemental they have unquestionable failed to adhere to their own standards. Even now, i can’t alt-tab out of the game (unless i have the main menu open, that is) without having it crash, multiplayer is disabled for another week and if I am not mistaken, you will have to install Impulse to receive the Day0 update, to point out just a few issues.
This really is a shame, because on the other hand I have had quite some fun playing the game so far. It seems to be fairly stable and playable by now, but I still have an occasional crash to desktop. I wish more of you could enjoy a more polished version of it. In the end, Stardock has brought all the criticism on itself by releasing the game in its (not so) current state, and I see no need to defend them or feel pitty for any bad press they receive.
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Erm, we’ve never been given the retail version via Impulse. Stardock always do day 0 patches rather than DRM, in the hope that having an Impulse only update with additional goodies will encourage people to buy rather than pirate the game. They’ve been doing it since GalCiv II.
In fact if anything one should hold them to account over their “no DRM claim”, they mightn’t have a check on the disc, but withholding content unless you register with a valid serial would amount to a DRM system in my book.
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@Archonsod
I admit I can’t prove to you, that we received the actual retail version via Impulse but do argue, that the version we received two days ago is older or even intentionally crippled compared to the boxed copy? I don’t think so, and the fact that they hastily released an intermediate patch and worked on the Day0 patch up until the last minute also tells a different tale.
Oh and about their DRM free game. When I installed Anno 1404, which is using Securom, all I had to do was entering a serial key and activate it online.
To play Elemental I have to install Impulse, create an account and download the patch before I can even think about playing it.
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Uh, Impulse as DRM? The most you can argue about it is that they try to entice you to install it to then have instant access to their stores and hopefully purchase more games. It’s not any kind of DRM, the games run independently from it, you can even uninstall it after patching, and patched copies of their games are just as easily and freely redistributed by pirates as retail copies are, so the same sources that provide the illegal retail based copies can just as easily provide the patched versions. It’s not DRM.
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There is a lot of hairsplitting about what is DRM and what is not. If you could just install and play Elemental I would agree with you. But you really, really want that patch before you start. Now, if you are already using Impulse, like I do, you are right, it is not intrusive at all. It is just like Steam, but always in offline-mode.
But take a look at the perspective from a customer who doesn’t have Impulse installed. I’m basically repeating what I said in my previous post, but you have to install a second application and create an online account to obtain the update. This process is even more complicated than unlocking a Securom game, which only uses a single pop-dialog. Suggesting, that i install/uninstall Impulse every time I want a patch is even more ridiculous in my opinion, at least just as bad us unregistering a Securom game when i uninstall it.
To be fair, Impulse as well as Steam provide you with additional features but so does the great UBISoft DRM system and Games for Windows Live. The only difference is, that two of those systems are matured and stable and two are trainwrecks, but at the core they are similar.
I also agree with you, that Elemental is theoretically DRM free, but in practice the quality of the released game forces all the additional hassle of Impulse upon you, unless Stardock is going to release the patches as standalone files.
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“I admit I can’t prove to you, that we received the actual retail version via Impulse but do argue, that the version we received two days ago is older or even intentionally crippled compared to the boxed copy?”
Frogboy stated in both the release announcement and elsewhere on the forums that the pre-Day 0 was the gold (retail) code plus some features they had backported from the Day 0 patch (the backporting in fact was the reason he gave for the delay – it was supposed to be released on Sunday morning, it was just before midnight when it was finally up). They released an interim patch on Monday, and then the Day 0 was out on Tuesday, followed by a hotfix for the archer issue a few hours later.
I don’t know what the state of the boxed copy is, that was sent to the presses around a week and a half ago when we were still playing Beta 4. I do know however that they announced the Day 0 patch back when beta 1 began over a year ago, so trying to read anything more into it is pointless. Like I said, since GalCiv II Stardock have always had a day 0 patch ready for the game release, the only difference is they were rather more candid about the reasons for doing so when GalCiv II came out – Brad came out and said it was intended to encourage pirates to buy a legitimate copy to get access to the update. Just look at the Day 0 patch notes – there’s five bugfixes in the thing, only one of which was a crash fix, three are simply flavour (i.e. having the AI name it’s cities in line with the game background) and one is cosmetic (not duplicating sovereign names when you include a faction but are using their sovereign with another).
The interim patch was purely for the pre-Day 0 digital release to fix bugs with that release, I can’t say which would be in the retail code or which applied to the Day 0 features.
In fact, call me cynical but I wouldn’t be surprised if the pre-Day 0 version wasn’t released simply so that they could get some testing on the Day 0 patch ahead of time. It would certainly explain why they didn’t just upload the Gold version rather than spend a day backporting features into it first.
@Al3xand3r “Uh, Impulse as DRM? The most you can argue about it is that they try to entice you to install it”
Like I said, they do it by withholding actual content. If it was just a case of bugfixing, balancetweaking or the like then it’s fine. When you start incorporating new features then what you’re basically doing is restricting content, which is pretty much the fundamental definition of DRM – you’re denied access to content until you prove you have a right to it. Whether that’s registering the serial on Impulse or putting the original disk in the drive is a matter of implementation rather than effect.
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My personal view is, that crippling the boxed (or any initial release) copy of a game is terrible. I doubt that this was the case, because the fully patched game has still its fair share of glitches. For example, I just built my second Bazaar in one of my cities, a building which you should be able to build only once in your entire kingdom. At least that’s what I can from its description text. The five bugfixes in the Day0 patch may have solved some issues, but there is still plenty to patch.
Mass Effects Cerberus Network is an example for a more reasonable incentive for buyers. Releasing a product with intentionally bugs, on the other hand would be cheating your customer. I don’t know how the installation of the boxed copy does look like, so this may be hypothetical, but if your customer isn’t very tech-savvy he may never know about that Day0 patch or any patches at all.
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It’s not crippled. If it’s anything like Gal Civ II you can play it perfectly fine right out of the box. The Day 0 patch in that instance added some extra ship components to the designer and improved AI.
In Elemental’s case the Day 0 patch adds an enhanced AI. It would presumably still be playable straight from the box, the only thing you’d be missing out on would be the combat speed changes (so it’d be the old 1 AP per spell, with .50 AP capable of being added on level up) and some of the more bizarre offspring occurences (400 defence and 2 hitpoints …). That’s assuming there’s none of the showstopping bugs or CTD’s in there. Oh, and the AI won’t be using canon names for it’s cities, but to be honest I haven’t spotted a difference in that respect – it still looks like the naming method involves getting a Countdown contestant with a vowel fetish drunk.
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@Shimarenda, Brad doesn’t have an acrimonious personal history with the qt3 community. He has an acrimonious history with a couple of the posters there, mainly Matthew Gallant who has been at least temp banned (hopefully permanently) for his latest stalking episode.
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The game is still in a bad state *after* the “day 0″ patch. It fixed some things, but it still misses the huge problems with the games AI, combat, lack of any kind of self-explanation, unintuitive UI, and massive amounts of technical and gameplay bugs. Siege engines are currently broken BTW, so don’t even bother with them under the current patch. The game is clearly not finished, and I’m taking Brad’s advice to not buy any more Stardock games. They clearly violated their own bill of rights here in order to get the game out on time when they knew perfectly well that it wasn’t ready for primetime. If I, a veteran of TBS games since MoM/Civ2/MoO, have problems with the UI and the game’s mechanics, imagine someone less experienced to games trying to play it? It’d be a terrible, terrible disaster.
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What’s wrong with the siege engines? I’ve been using them fairly successfully, though admittedly not in sieges (they work great for smacking down trolls).
And I don’t get the UI problems. As far as I can tell it explains everything you need to know, assuming you’ve the patience to read the tooltips, but then I’ve been playing since the beta opened so I’m not exactly approaching it with a completely fresh set of eyes.
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Game summed up: “To scroll you can hold down your left mouse button and drag the mouse in the direction you wish the camera to move. Currently scrolling via the edge of the screen is not working.”
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Oh and the #2 quote is even wrong (it doesn’t say anything like that). way to go Mr Smith, maybe you should attend an English class?
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In the original version published in ’08 it did:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/08/30/stardock-gamers-bill-of-rights/
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I preordered Elemental and played it in the beta. I found it obtuse and confusing, though oddly compelling and I remained hopeful. The tactical battles were pretty awful but I only had a couple and it’s quite possible they get better. The graphics were fine, and I experienced no performance issues.
I primarily purchased it to play with my girlfriend, but as MP is still not enabled, we’ve tabled it for a while and have gone back to Napoleon: Total War. We both had some trouble getting various updates to download, though that was probably just release day stresses on their servers.
In short, eh. Looks like another rocky games release. Happily, the underlying product might well be sound and/or fun, which is saying a lot given what utter crap some long-awaited games can turn out to be. I’ll withhold judgment until some polishing gets done and until I have a proper period of time to fiddle with the game.
On the other hand, I read RPS several times a day and WTF. This was always a pretty heady, if at times overly precious and twee, respite from the humdrum breatherism of most games/games journalism sites. Damn you dirty apes for trying to turn it into another call-and-response echo chamber of gamesrage.
This article is bad. And the hysterical piling on is bad. Stop it.
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I bought it, I played it, and it’s definitely in early beta stage. I didn’t have the courage to read all the comments above me, but I’m highly disappointed in this game that had so much potential…
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Wardell can have his wish… I will not buy another game from him and Stardock. He is trying to say it was taken out of context and he responded so strongly because it was a friend criticizing him… guy is not that bright when it comes to handling criticism. He acted like a child with the Demigod fiasco and it is just as bad this time around. It is a shame because I can see potential there, but I think calling it a beta game is too kind. To me it feels like an alpha even. Just beyond bad all the holes in it between design, gameplay, graphics and such.
After quite a few purchases such as GalCiv II and Sins… I will wash my hands of Frogboy and Stardock’s products at this point.
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Quoted from a guy called FlameInc in the comments thread attached to the PC Gamer article -
“…polish your games until it shows how much YOU care about them, so that maybe someone ELSE will care about them too.”
Beautiful. Developers of the world take note (especially Stardock).
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GalCiv 2 was not 2D.
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Glad I didn’t preordered it. Bill of Rights or not a game publishing business is still a business. Any company will release its product no matter its state as long as they see benefit on it, or are forced to by the competition. All the rest is just pillow talk.
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loving this game so far
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I’ve just been reading some of the Fidgit posts about Elemental, and it really does sound like a fascinating game under the bugs and crashes and what-not.
Such a shame.
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How to make money as an indie?
1) Buildup
2) Release
3) DRAMA!
4) ???
5) Profit?
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Brad has issued an apology in the Developers Journal of the official forums: http://forums.elementalgame.com/392474
Other than that, Elemental runs very stable on my PC. Maybe I’m just lucky but I have no problems although I’m running Win 7 64bit and an ATI HD 5770.
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“What, a gamer’s bill of rights? Oh yeah, we wrote and published that silly thing, didn’t we? Well, how to explain my actions then? You see, it’s like this: money was involved.”
Anywho, I’m not shelling out fifty american dollars plus cash on any game during this recession, buggy or not, so I’ll be waiting for the price drop that will likely take place some time well after the game is patched. If you’re buying on the release day, you’re setting yourself up doubly.
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No, no, me: you’re doing it wrong.
That’s “fifty American dollars plus tax.”
And I probably wanted to add a sentence at the end: The sooner you learn to ditch release-day hype, the happier a PC gamer you shall be.
Also, that I loved Master of Magic and am disappointed Stardock decided to push for a buggy release on the most likely thing we have to a Master of Magic revival in the present day.
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I am seeing a lot of uneducated posts based off an uneducated article. Bravo on furthering the stereotype of internet “personalities.”
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If anyone is interested then stardock have posted a response to this article and the reporting of Brad Wardell’s comments here. I’m sure the RPS guys will be responding in the morning.
Most interesting is the tactic acknowledge in Stardock’s response that they know the game isn’t ready. However you look at it, that does make them look a bit daft for releasing before hand even if some retailers broke the release date.
Like a lot of other people posting here, I’ve been watching Element for a long time, and it’s become increasing clear that this game was never going to be ready for an August release date. It’s a shame but I’m content to wait a while until everything is sorted before I make the purchase (Most probably when I need something to wean me off my Civ V addiction)
Hopefully this will mostly be case of live and learn. And never to respond to forum posts if your tired and feeling a bit cross, no matter who you are.
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I’m gonna clarify that my frustration and amazement at the lack of completeness of the game was fuelled by a feeling that underneath the bugs and sellotape is a quite decent idea.
It’s just nowhere near complete – not even by PC standards, let alone console standards or better – and no amount of ‘Day 0′ patches are going to resolve most of the issues (and worryingly, every patch seems to add more problems!!)
I’ve spent 2-3 hours on a friends copy yesterday and today (I’ve learned my lesson and I wait and see before buying full price releases these days) and even with the latest patches the games is
a – unfriendly – it lacks a proper tutorial – what there is (and there’s a lot more than there was) tends to tell you what to do but never HOW to do it
b – unintuitive – the UI in places is obtuse in the extreme! A lot of gameplay mechanics are far from self-explanatory (even to people who’ve played some 4X games before) and 4X games, in general, need some early guidance and this doesn’t have it.
c – obtuse – there’s nowhere near enough feedback as to what’s going on and what effect your actions are having – which makes exploring the range of things you can do a mixture of frustrating and impossible.
I reckon they’ll get to the point this is a decent 4X fantasy game BUT you will need to read the manual, watch the 3rd-party videos and ask a tonne of questions on forums – in other words this is going to be a niche title at best (Civ 5 will arrive and steamroller it into history I reckon).
Given it’s full-price status – it’s really hard to not say “don’t buy it just yet’ tho – partly because of the work it needs and partly because it will drop in price…
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p.s. whilst I can see why people thing the article is “a bit of a dig at Stardock” – I think it also makes a fair point.
Stardock scored a LOT of internet kudos and PR when they released their Gamer’s Bill of Rights, to then go and break it themselves is something I think they deserve some backlash over…
Seriously – it’s like watching a traffic policemen careering at massive speed into a bridge parapet – it’s going to get reported :)
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“Seriously – it’s like watching a traffic policemen careering at massive speed into a bridge parapet – it’s going to get teleported :)”
fixed that for you.
for some reason, all the leaders seems to have the teleport skill.
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Haven’t had any issues with the launch version of the game. Even played it on both ym desktop and my laptop.
Elemental has its issues (hello obtuse interface) but nothing out of the ordinary for a 4X game. I can’t say I find it especially glitchy. I have crashed a total of twice in a few hours of playing, and both were shortly after alt-tabbing multiple times. If I just stay in-game, nothing goes wrong. I played a 900 turn game without a single issue last night.
Maybe I’m missing something?
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On the performance front – their system requirements are VERY VERY low but machines with far more oomph are suffering from horrible lag and graphical issues.
The PC I played on was old – a P4 3.4HT+1GB+8600GT – and performance was very very poor and got worse as the game went on. Alt-Tabbing crashed the game instantly too.
Their system requirements say Pentium 1GHZ or better – I think that might need some adjustment??
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There’s an issue with quad core CPU’s that causes slowdown, particularly in the late game. They’re working on it.
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I am playing this, and after a few games, I have made some elemental (no pun intended) tips:
– in Elementals, you need to build the houses (huts). the population of the city is somewhat like 10/10, if you don’t build huts.
– food is a very important resource
– and that stuff that looks like culture, is not!.. is the power of attraction of your city for new people. so more of it, and your citys grown faster.
If you lack a)food, b)huts c)influence, your cities will not grown!.
Also seems these npc’s floating around are very important, can make a world of difference. Also, seems a good idea to marry as soon as possible, since the childrens give nice bonuses (but in mid game, so is not all that important).
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Actually it’s also culture in a way too, it determines the size of the influence border the city exerts :P
When it comes to marriage, note that the children’s stats will be slightly varied from the average of the parents, and they can inherit talents from either parent. Sometimes it’s worth waiting until you’ve researched the recruitment line of adventure techs so you can recruit the heroes with extra talents and marry one of those.
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Here’s a post from the Elemental forums from Brad himself in response to this article (and the comment shitstorm)
http://forums.elementalgame.com/392474
I’ve been lurking around on the forums and #elemental IRC and the stardock dev team has been up in the offices all night every night for the past few days trying their best to provide a solid product for people to play as quick as they can. Go hang out with them in the IRC, and see how hard they’re working on this game, and the dedication they have to it. Brad and co. are a class act company, and the game is plenty playable, AND finished (along with the few bugs that come from a first release, anyone remember Fallout 2, or hell, the original Master of Magic?).
The bill of rights was not broken.
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“I’ve been lurking around on the forums and #elemental IRC and the stardock dev team has been up in the offices all night every night for the past few days trying their best to provide a solid product for people to play as quick as they can.”
That kinda sums up the problem, doesn’t it.
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Time to ditch this site… talk about piling on.
So the guy made an idiotic remark in the middle of a flamewar on a forum. A lot of people like that he talks to the people who play his games, but I’m sure after this he’ll stop doing that.
As for the game, I’ve been playing it and enjoying it. I was looking for a long period of good support but PC Gamer and now RPS are doing everything they can to kill the product.
So a flip of the bird to this site. Removing it from the RSS feed.
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Woah – so now pointing out that a company that promised never to release a game in an unfinished state have released a game in an unfinished state is verboten? You might want an extra set of hands to go with the ones you are putting over your eyes. Otherwise you might hear about this kind of stuff from someone, even if you can’t read about it.
If you seriously think that this game was released in what any impartial person would call a ‘finished’ state then you are either seriously misguided, a serious Stardock fanboy or very easily pleased.
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and yes I’m very serious :)
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I’d hardly call this post “everything they can”. So ragequitting over it seems kind of ironic.
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Generally speaking, if the developer says it’s “finished” then it’s finished. All else is just opinion. Unless you intend to break into their home and force them to work at gunpoint.
In which case I should probably stop commenting as you’d be my boss and aware that my definition of “work from home” differs somewhat from yours.
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I don’t see why people are having a go at RPS for this one… kind of a case of shooting the Messenger if you ask me. Yes, maybe Quinns should give up on the investigative journalism with the link between the missing Bill of Rights and the shoddy state of the released game… but, Stardock didn’t do anything to correct that when they were contacted. Even then, everyone makes mistakes… and Quinns one here seems kind of small compared to the problems some people are having with the game, and the mistakes made by Stardock in release.
Apart from that though, this story just seems to be relaying the concerns of the PCGamer article, and RPS readers in the forum. What is so bad about that? Should RPS NOT cover players concerns about games? Should they have not run an article about the PC communities outrage over lack of dedicated servers, lean and prone for MW2? Should they not have articles critical of DRM?
In the end, a company should not be releasing a broken or unfinished game, which is what some people feel this is. That goes doubly so for a company that trumpets that Bill of Rights. The release of broken games has been a major concern in the PC gaming community for years. This is a legitimate story, especially with the hypocrisy of Stardock and their Bill of Rights. I like Stardocks approach, I like no DRM and GalCiv2 was excellent… that’s why I think the community should be honest with them… because I like them, and I want to see them improve.
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I wish I hadn’t bought the game, however it is not broken to the point of being unplayable. Sure, last night an AI just sat outside his start city for the entire game without making any effort to actually play, but I can sympathise with that.
Sure the attack strength of my target randomly went up and down each time I attacked, presumably due to the bug when the number of soldiers in a stack was calculated incorrectly based on health. But this actually added some needed excitement to the tactical battles which otherwise most closely resemble the sword fighting in Pirate of the Burning Sea.
See: http://forums.elementalgame.com/391978/page/3/#replies
Sure my caravan refused to trigger a trade route with another city, which is usually automatic so there was no tooltip to hover for, and the text on the card in the far right corner of the screen had two strings overlaying each other so both were unreadable. But the AI city was only a single square anyhow.
Sure all of these things are annoying as hell, and shoddy, and simple to fix without “staying late every night” if you just work on the game before release like a professional. But to say it’s broken to the point of being unplayable isn’t true. It just isn’t fun.
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Wow… That wasn’t a failed reply, but it replied when I meant it to be a stand alone post. My fault, I was going to reply but changed my mind… and it does fit as a reply.
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Mine was supposed to be a stand alone post. I think this time I failed the RPS comment system, rather than it failing me. anyway, it’s not directed at you Mr wrong
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Brad (“frogboy”) responds:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/392474
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http://www.gamersbillofrights.org/
Hm… still there.
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Yeah out of fairness I think RPS should post a link in the main article to Brad Wardell’s response.
I haven’t played the game so I can’t comment on the quality of the product. I did like GalCiv 2 though.
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This is a low point for RPS… this is too good of a website to be doing something this stupid.
Sure the game clearly looks like it’s not as good as it should be, but these games aren’t exactly easy or popular to make, and I’m more then willing to cut developers who make them some slack. It certainly doesn’t sound like it’s nearly as broken as say Space Empires 5 was, and even that game could be quite fun (after alot of patches/mods by players admittedly).
And as for the guy blowing off some steam – who gives a damn? Fine, he’s a jerk, last I checked I wasn’t evaluating game developers based on whether I want to have a beer with them. If they fix up their game and it’s a good game at the end of the day (and most reports do claim that there is a good game underneath the bugs), no one will remember any of this crap.
Other then Civ5, what else do we really have to look forward to in the 4X genre?
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Exactly.
This kind of outrage can only mean we will never see such game again.
Is this what you want ?
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Have we really become so desperate that we need to pretend shit games are good, just so that we get more of them? That’s pretty sad, but not exactly an unfair reflection on the state of the PC market.
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if their games were actually on steam I might buy them. Right now stardock’s longevity is looking less and less reliable, not more. Bad news for online-based DRM.
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Impulse has been around for about three years now, and Stardock make far more money on their apps line of business than their games, it’s why they can afford to continue working on them for several years rather than have to rush to get a sequel or expansion out.
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Which is really surprising. I mean, honestly, who are these poor sobs actually buying their desktop utilities ? And there are that many of them to fund game development ? Really ?
Then again, its USia, you people have some weird shit going on, like some deer hunting simulator being the best selling game or some such…
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Microsoft. The animated desktop feature in Vista and onwards is Stardock’s app, licensed to Microsoft. I dunno about Brad, but if I were licensing anything to Microsoft you can bet I’ll be taking them for every penny I can get :P
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I think we need to make something clear at this point. – the state of Elemental (1.05 the ‘day 0′ patched version) is still FAR from ‘complete’ and any attempt by Stardock or anyone else to say otherwise is disingenuous.
I’m a veteran of many PC releases and even a few MMOs – I expect to deal with some issues and I understand the complexities of supporting the wildly varying hardware people use – but beyond all of that, Elemental comes across as nothing less than unfinished/not ready for sale.
It lacks polish, particularly in bringing new players into the game and the fact that a lot of tutorial content appeared in the Day 0 patch supports my view that they’re still busy writing it (wheras in truth, this stuff should have been in there before BETA even!)
Fact is that the game as-is is NOT as polished/complete/rounded as I’d expect of a full-price release – in fact it’s quite some way from that – and that’s news story here.
Their Bill of Rights says that we should get a game which is complete – they released one which isn’t – not the Gold release or their interim patched release, the one they have out there right now, on release day – is not ready for release and they goofed bigstyle.
No amount of blaming comments to your mates or the fact you had to patch something because a retailer did what retailers do (they did it with their last game so they can hardly be surprised) is going to change that.
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Are you crazy? A tutorial BEFORE beta? How often do you want them to have to re-write it in its entirety, 20 times or more?
Apart from that you have a point about it being unfinished, but then there were a fuckton of games that were as unfinished, didn’t get patched as fast and no one gave nearly as much of a shit about those – and they weren’t even done by an indie studio.
As for not friendly to “new” players…. I really don’t give a fuck. Anyone who ever played some 4X should understand the game even without a tutorial. The existing 4X player crowd should be big enough to support any niche game like this, screw new players if that’s what you have to do to keep it inside budget and still make a good game.
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If you don’t have a tutorial in the BETA, how are beta testers supposed to know if the game works or not??
BETA does not mean ‘unfinished’ – although games developers are starting to make it mean just that. BETA is supposed to mean ‘not fully tested but largely feature complete’ – if you’re still writing it, it’s an ALPHA at best.
A tutorial – and a polished intro in general – are something which should be in a game EONS before it’s release anyway.
Even the shonkiest ‘needs 6 months work’ MMO tends to have a decent intro/tutorial these days – and there are 1-man indie titles which have more polish than this does – all IMO of course.
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Uh, MMO tutorials are generally along the lines of “here’s some utterly basic shit any 5 year old would already know” (like character movement, allocating skillpoints etc) and don’t touch on a game’s underlying mechanics (numbers-wise) AT ALL. They only show you the most superficial mechanics – and how the numbers work you have to figure out on your own, always.
Thus you probably can do one of those earlier, most of the time, even if you change up your underlying mechanics to balance stuff.
That wouldn’t have been possible with Elemental, even surmising by what very little snippets I’ve read of the changes in beta.
About how beta testers should know if the game is working as intended… they simply don’t, if there isn’t a devblog/post about it specifying the current focus of testing. In all the betas I’ve been there certainly was never any more than a most cursory of tutorials that didn’t tell you fuck all about if any specific mechanic was working as intended or not (and that includes a whole lot of MMO betas).
At least in the betas that were actually betas instead of the these days so liked “betas” purely for PR purposes with the added benefit of “shit doesn’t work? LOL it’s beta!” get out of jail free card for the developers (or pure stress test “betas”), that is….
That all said, I do agree that it SHOULD have a working tutorial, it’s just that in my opinion a tutorial is really the last thing they should focus their time on given all the other things that need a little more work – especially is in this kind of niche genre.
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Did Master of Magic have a tutorial?
All we got in the beta was documentation. Amazingly, the game also ships with some documentation which some refer to as a “manual”. I tried reading it but regrettably my dexterity didn’t increase. I did find my ability to play the game improved by a few points though.
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Well this is meant to be a reply to my last comment but this shitty comment system won’t do it so here.
@Arch & mostly iax, so, to you it would still be DRM if they just had the patches on their own website which required account login to let you download them? Just so I know who I’m arguing with here. Because that would be silly and basically saying they have DRM just by their selling methods alone because they don’t have the files public and you require to offer credit card info and whatever else to purchase it. Meh. And lol @ the distinction that if it’s bugfixes it’s not DRM, if it’s new content then it is DRM. What? So you’d rather they don’t develop their games post release because if they do, they’re DRMing them? You really think all the updates done to GalCiv for months and months after release were “held back” to DRM the game, even though as I’ve said already the re-distribution of the files and games once you acquired them is just as easy for a pirate as the boxed copy? Take that tin foil hat off, it’s messing with your brain functions. And no, Impulse isn’t like Steam that is permanently in offline mode, it’s not even running when you don’t want to run a patch.
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@Al3xand3r
What I wanted to say was, that Elementals current state forces the customer to “make use” of Impulse which in itself absolutely qualifies as a DRM system, as it is controlling what software you are eligible to download and install.
If you have to prove, that you pre-own a certain game/software before you download a patch, than you could argue that the patch itself is protected by DRM but not necessarily the original software. If I just have to create an acount but not register the game itself, its not DRM but anuisance.
“And lol @ the distinction that if it’s bugfixes it’s not DRM, if it’s new content then it is DRM. What? So you’d rather they don’t develop their games post release because if they do, they’re DRMing them? ”
I never made that distinction. I said that it is okay to make additional content available at release that is only avaiable for those who really bought that game, but it is terrible if you willingly release a broken game that can only be played propperly if you install a release-day patch.
Whatever you sell in a store, it has to be enjoyable without any kind of additional patching. You wouldn’t want to buy a car which you have to bring to your mechanic in the first week, so they can install gas and break pedals they have developed the month before.
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You’re dense, just re-read my posts and yours or something.
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We were talking about release day patches, not continuous support. First you are putting words into my mouth, then you start throwing insults. What’s up with you?
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” to you it would still be DRM if they just had the patches on their own website which required account login to let you download them?”
Yup. In fact that’s precisely how we do it at work, and we’ve been referring to it as DRM for around a decade and a half now.
” So you’d rather they don’t develop their games post release because if they do, they’re DRMing them?”
Are you confusing me with the anti-DRM unwashed hippy brigade? I don’t have a problem with DRM.
” the re-distribution of the files and games once you acquired them is just as easy for a pirate as the boxed copy? ”
Name one DRM system that isn’t easier to circumvent than actually go through. I wasn’t aware DRM was defined by it’s success however.
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Zero day patch means the game was not finished when it went gold.
A feature, ie multiplayer, was not in the gold release therefore the game was released as not finished.
Their bill of rights says no unfinished games; there’s two examples above demonstrating how it’s not finished.
End of discussion
Fin
Bye
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It’s a gamer’s bill of rights, not a developer’s laws for release. It’s up to you to judge if the game is finished or not, and if the latter, ask and receive a refund, since Stardock will honor that bill.
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Did you even bother to read the (idiotic) Bill of Rights thing? Or are you just regurgitating Quintin Smith’s sloppy and inaccurate and intentionally provocative bullshit?
Like I said above, I bought it and I’m not impressed. I wish I hadn’t bought it. Another developer takes me on a bit of a ride. It’s sad but to be expected, and at least in this case there’s a small possibility there’s a fun game under there that’ll pop up at some point. Empire: Total War, anyone?
But it’s exactly this sort of “I agree with the angry article!! End of discussion!!” shit that’s cheesing me off. This site is supposed to do better. I don’t come here looking for some mob justice spurred on by needlessly provocative and inaccurate articles.
Seriously, Mr. Smith, please show a bit more care and equanimity in your work here. This isn’t Fox News. I’d like there to be some places where I know I’m going to get measured, intelligent analysis unmarred by a bunch of mongering and pandering.
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For the record, my mate has decided that 10 CTDs in 2 hours is enough and he’s invoking their Bill of Rights to demand a refund through Impulse.
I’ll let you know how he gets on – I suspect he’ll be told to f**k off myself…
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Multiplayer is in the game, the multiplayer servers are turned off. And the zero day patch was announced over a year before the launch date, which is a pretty weird definition of “unfinished” to me. Was Dragon Age “unfinished” because they’d provided DLC on launch and announced future expansions?
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I’m wondering why people have decided to leap on Quintin quite so hard – as he’s really only pointing out that the people who invented the idea of a Bill of RIghts don’t seem to have read it.
It’s not a “Daily Mail” or “Fox News” thing at all – they called-out every other developer in the world in a highly public way and then they went on and ignored their own calls.
Even if you wade through all the FUD about retailers breaking street dates etc. – it’s not like many people are saying “man this is an amazingly polished game – well done” is it?
How isn’t this a reasonable topic of debate?
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An update mentioning Brad’s reply and the fact that the Bill of Rights is still up would be in place by now.
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1. He himself has not played it.
2. He misquotes the Bill of Rights completely. For the record, I think the Bill of Rights is moronic and should be used against Stardock at every turn. But if you’re going to quote it, quote it right. It doesn’t say finished anywhere.
3. He implies it’s been taken down and that there has been some duplicity there. It’s still up.
4. He represents that it’s “broken to the point of unplayable,” when in fact, his real point is that it’s “unfinished.” It’s perfectly playable for many people, myself inlcuded, albeit obtuse, buggy, and incomplete.
5. He pokes at Wardwell gratuitously by selectively pulling a quote from some stupid flamewar. Wardwell’s fault for saying that stupidity, but clearly that’s not the man’s marketing stance and I’d think you’d couch it in less loaded terms.
6. For proof, note the stampede rushing in on cue chanting HE’S RIGHT IT’S UNFINISHED AND THEY PROMISED FINISHED AND LOL THEY DELETED THE BILL OF RIGHTS. But again (a) what he says it was “unplayable” — a hyperbolic stretch — and (b) he’s misquoted the Bill of Rights while (c) falsely implying it’s been deleted, which it hasn’t.
By all means, have at Stardock. It is a fair topic for debate, and they deserve all the jabs they get. Doesn’t change the fact that this article sucks in the ways described above.
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Exactly. The release of unfinished games for PC is a major concern to the community, and a legitimate story. It’s even more of a story because of the Bill of Rights thing.
I didn’t see people jumping on Kieron yesterday when he couldn’t recommend Academagia, and pointed out there is no demo for it. Quinns is just pointing out that a company that touts the Bill of Rights seems to have ignored some of it, and there are concerns from people who have bought the game, that it’s been released in a poor state.
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Quoted from Tom Chick, who is obviously suffering from “forum admin syndrome” :
No kidding. Fuck you, Tom Francis at PC Gamer and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun for treating my forum that way. I have to come up with material for a daily blog also. I know what a challenge it can be, but I don’t lift informal comments out of context to be provocative. Did you guys also post how graciously Brad received some similarly harsh comments I’d made the previous day in the same goddamn thread? Will you post how graciously Brad has apologized to Ben?
As if there isn’t plenty to write about Elemental without digging up one line from a long and varied exchange!
Again, fuck you, Petadact and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun. Assholes. Go Kotaku from someone else’s forum.
-Tom
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If he thinks a couple of articles taking a pop at their releasing an unfinished game is bad – wait until the reviews hit, he’ll probably fucking explode :)
I’m reckoning a sub-70 Metascore but I’d like to be wrong about that.
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Tom Chick’s the admin of QT3, and not, in fact, a member of Stardock. He’s not complaining about the digs at elemental — he did some himself.
He’s complaining about the tabloid-quality quotegrabbing.
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Quinns only used the quote because it was from the PCGamer article he was bringing to attention. So, I don’t think he can be lumped in with PCGamer on it… he was just reporting the argument PCGamer are making.
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Journalists have a responsibility to check their sources. He did not.
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He was repeating PC Gamer’s slapjob. Worse, he was aping it third-hand, and throwing in a few factual errors of his own to top it off.
Chick is right. This is a snarky sleazy article, and a blown chance for RPS to adequately and ACCURATELY take Stardock and Elemental to task for this release.
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Obviously the only right way for Quintin to resolve this is to post Tom Chick’s flame on the RPS front page with his own fiery diatribe… because the triple negative effect will just cancel everything out
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“Fuck you [...] for treating my forum that way”
That’s just about the whiniest thing I’ve ever heard.
Either the guy said what he is quoted to have said or he didn’t. How much additional context can you possibly need for the statement “Also, to anyone, like you Ben, saying the game is like an “early beta” then well, please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.”
Given that he’s now apologised for saying it, I’d say it’s a fair assumption that he did, in fact, say it. So basically, Tom Chick can stow it.
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Just recieved my refund from Stardock from my pre-order.
I expected a game that would work on a quad-core system, wouldn’t suffer huge memory leaks, wouldn’t CTD multiple times even after the Day 0 patch (which is something I absolutely abhor and have written/ranted about before), and most importantly, would have functional multiplayer from the day of release.
To ship a game like this without these things fixed/implemented is to release an unfinished game – the game was advertised as having multiplayer. If Modern Warfare 2 had shipped SP only and the multiplayer and Spec Ops had been tacked on in a patch a week or two later, everyone would be tearing strips off Activision and Infinity Ward. But because Stardock, a relatively small company, are doing it, we should accept the fanboys whinings about how we just don’t get it, or we just want to kill them game before it has a chance? No.
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So you got a refund but are still complaining? Do you want them to pay you or what is the issue here?
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I wasn’t aware getting a refund also involved me handing back my right to comment on the game. But thanks for reminding me.
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Actually, how long did it take Empire: Total War to pop in campaign multiplayer? Months and months. Relative dead silence from the games press.
I’m all for taking developers behind the shed for releasing crap. Doing it without fibbing and hyperbole would be cool though.
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Dude, you just received a refund on a *PC GAME*… after and playing it, no less. In 2010. To me that’s pretty remarkable.
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Tariq – So, Creative Assembly/SEGA got away with it, so we should let Stardock do so too? Er… no.
goodgimp – I’m not saying I don’t appreciate them acknowledging they’ve messed up, and allowing refunds for those who want them. The fact is, they didn’t need to rush this game out in the first place, and when they did, while the left hand (the dev team) was offering refunds and working away to fix the mess, the right hand (Stardock fans) and the head (Wardell) were laying the smackdown on anyone who dared imply the game was less than GOTY material after the Day 0 patch.
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@Kid A
Stop. Reread: “I’m all for taking developers behind the shed for releasing crap. Doing it without fibbing and hyperbole would be cool though.”
I’m responding to this: “If Modern Warfare 2 had shipped SP only and the multiplayer and Spec Ops had been tacked on in a patch a week or two later, everyone would be tearing strips off Activision and Infinity Ward.”
You’re wrong. CA did it, and aside from some consumer grumping, the games press did a big shoulder shrug.
It was wrong to grant CA a pass. It is right to take some shots at Stardock. It is wrong to fib and rabble-rouse on half facts, particualrly when you’re writing for a site, like RPS, that is usually pretty measured.
So stop already.
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The amount of anger over this and the PC Gamer article is absolutely absurd, let alone the flooding of the site from the upset Elemental/Stardock fans (note, FANS. Not fanboys, those frightening people stay on Stardock’s own forums and seemingly live in a bubble thankfully).
It probably wasn’t kosher for Tom Francis to take that quote from Brad off of QT3, and it probably wasn’t good that Quintin posted about Francis’ article here without doing some extra digging. But them’s the breaks when you post with your real name as the CEO of a company and make inflammatory comments on the internet on a public anybody-can-view-it forum. Remember all of the shouting a while back when Blizzard wanted to implement RealID on their forums and how so many here thought it wasn’t a big deal? Well, this is a nice example of why it did concern people. Once something’s on the internet, it multiplies and spreads like bacteria and can’t be removed.
He’s a CEO, not an under-paid over-worked code monkey that just couldn’t take it anymore. He’s done it before and has yet to learn his lesson about taking such things to a private discussion or being able to curb his initial emotional response. That is unacceptable at this point.
Tthe Bill of Rights “disappearing” was just plain odd and goofy though. Bad Quintin!
But you know what? Elemental is a bloody mess. It was a mess during the pre-release, it was a mess on the retail “gold” version, it’s still a mess (but slightly better!) with the patches. And unlike what some commentators have said here, some magically fixed version totally different from the ‘pre-order pre-release’ wasn’t on store shelves, they’re one and the same and that broken mess being slammed is the version being sold in stores right now. The day-0 patch(es) is only available if you register your retail copy with Impulse. So if you dig Stardock for their anti-DRM/anti-Steam/anti-whatever and want to play Elemental without authenticating online, you get the broken unplayable mess. How does this not warrant coverage?
RPS and PC Gamer both gave Elemental plenty of pre-release coverage, including interviews with Wardell himself hyping the game and the new Impulse Reactor suite that launched with Elemental. This isn’t some small indie game being blasted for having bugs, this is a full priced game shipping an utterly broken retail release with gaping holes in it’s feature list and a disturbing lack of polish.
If all the defense people have for Elemental right now is to scream at PC Gamer for posting that quote (and I half agree there) and point to the day-0 patch as some kind of miracle patch that fixes everything (it doesn’t), then they really need to take a step back and look at all the problems being reported RIGHT NOW, POST PATCH and the retail issue and get some perspective.
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I think a lot of gamers are uneducated as consumers and willing to accept practices that would be completely unacceptable in other businesses. Granted, creating games is tricky and hard to get flawless (even more so for the PC with all different configurations). That doesn’t mean allowing a game that is more or less broken to go gold. But that has happened over and over again. Sometimes with the idea that a 0 day patch is enough to get it playable. Sometimes because publisher pressure forces them to release the game prematurely. Sometimes as a money grab (hitting the Christmas market or the game is in such a bad shape further investments aren’t worthwhile). Sometimes because they run out of money to continue develop the game.
And when that happens, if you have a problem with it or god forbid journalists react, then it is deemed unfair towards the poor developers who are working so hard.
Try to sell a car, bookshelf, medicine or a pillow that isn’t finished and see what the reaction is.
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@ Freud:
“I think a lot of gamers are uneducated as consumers and willing to accept practices that would be completely unacceptable in other businesses. Granted, creating games is tricky and hard to get flawless (even more so for the PC with all different configurations).”
I blame the InterTubes. Do any fellow geezers here remember those wonderful Microprose tactical combat sims, with the thick paper manuals (full documentation, imagine that!)? The game worked as well as it was ever going to work on the day you bought it, because no patching was possible? Ah, those were the days (sheds a small tear…).
On the positive side, the Internet allows continued improvement of an already good game, if the developer supports it well enough. On the negative side, we have fiascos like Elemental. And back on the positive side again, we have online information that lets us make better-informed buying decisions.
I’m a huge fan of GalCiv2 and was ready to buy Elemental the first day I heard about it. I’m part of their natural customer base, or should be. But many things never really smelled right about the game to me, from the day I first started tracking it. I would have bought it on release day anyway, just on faith, if I hadn’t heard about the shaky state of the engine. This is not the way to handle a major release when there is already an existing fan base from previous games. I’m now solidly in “Creative Assembly/Total War” mode…. gonna wait a few months to see what develops.
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you can fit one of these old games as a minigame in a current game. current games are more complex
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“unlike what some commentators have said here, some magically fixed version totally different from the ‘pre-order pre-release’ wasn’t on store shelves, they’re one and the same”
From the Day 0 preview post – http://forums.elementalgame.com/391747
“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++)..”
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On the topic of the wording of that part of the Gamers Bill of RIghts – what it says on “it’s own site” right now is NOT what it said when they pimped it around the world.
Article from back-in-the-day which has Quintins wording for Point 2 and Wardell’s picture next to it.
http://www.next-gen.biz/blogs/the-gamers-bill-rights
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Damn. I looked up to Stardock. After Demigod, and now this, no more.
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No one would be crying this hard about Elemental if Stardock simply hadn’t fucking released the game three days early.
Some idiots broke the street date. Brad, putting his role of gaming’s superhero ahead of his role as a developer and publisher, decided to unlock the game for everyone instead of just sticking to his guns, keeping the game locked up, and having the Day-0 patch being the first thing greeting 99% of game owners.
Three (or four?) days of chicken littles, amplified rabid liberals who have personal vendettas against Brad for his crazy and aggressive conservative views, amplified by the morons who still can’t understand that Stardock didn’t fucking develop Demigod, amplified by the fact that anyone who said “wait for the day-0 like they said” was now branded a fanboi idiot.
It’s just your usual sick little internet echo chamber. Rarely a problem before a game is released, rarely a problem after a game is released, an IMMENSE problem if the game is in some strange limbo of released and not released.
I don’t know. This whole debacle has brought out and summed up everything embarassing about video game fandom.
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The broken street date is no excuse at all. If what was replicated is full of bugs and even lacks important features, no amount of releasing on the correct day would fix it.
Stardock fucked up, and now we’re invaded by fanboys saying that Wal-mart and PC gamer are the guilty parties here. Wonderful.
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@undead dolphin hacker
You’re defending a day-0 patch for a retail release that was completely unplayable? That did jack shit for quad-core owners like me and remains unplayable? How about the people still getting the graphics issues? What about all the people that get the white screen when moving to tactical combat? How about the complete lack of polish on the game?
How about the multiplayer that has to be patched in, along with other missing features?
How does any of that even come close to a reasonably finished game ready to go gold? What happens to people that may not be able to get online to patch it? Tough shit, I guess!
No, that’s not how things work. Patches to fix things are fine. Day-0 patches that are absolutely essential to the game even being PLAYABLE from a company that likes to tout how they have no DRM and no required online authentication is worthy of criticism. This has nothing to do with whatever conspiracy theory you’ve conjured about the internet having it out for Stardock and Brad Wardell. I don’t care about his politics, I just want his games to WORK.
By the way…Stardock didn’t develop Demigod, that is true. But they did develop it’s NETCODE, which to this day is still somewhat unstable and caused a ton of grief for the game right from the very beginning. Demigod’s release played out suspiciously like this…except it was playable against the AI without a day-0 patch and ran on quad cores just dandy without all the crashes.
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It’s the indignant fury that gets me. Why is everyone so mad? Why are all these people who haven’t even played the game, let alone purchased it, so mad?
It’s the fucking echo chamber effect. Every damn nameless mad person spits out the exact same crap that they read from the last nameless mad person.
IN THE VERY FIRST REPLY I’m already getting called an “invading fanboy” by posting something that isn’t the regurgitated rage everyone wants to read and feel righteous about. I’ve been reading this site for over two years now, and post in comment threads about once a month or so. I’m a nobody on this site, but I’ve been here for awhile now.
@Anin:
I mean no offense by this! I just wanted to point out to you what I see as this echo chamber effect I’ve mentioned.
Your whole post comes off as THINK OF THE CHILDREN! I think a big part of that tone comes from the fact that you never come out and explicitly say that any of this is effecting you. I don’t even know if you’ve bought the game, all I know is that you have a quad-core processor.
Look at what you’re writing — everything is about “the people” that are suffering this bug or that bug. I’m sure it’s true, but it also comes off as hearsay due to how it’s written. There’s also the hyperbole of “unplayable” and “complete lack of polish.” The game is indeed playable and does indeed have some degree of polish.
Multiplayer: Yeah, it’s on the box and not in the game at all. That’s bad. But what other promised features are missing? I’m being serious, I’d like to know.
People who can’t get online? This argument ended a little after a year and a half from Steam’s release: “People” are online now. And again, there’s that quasi-ironic righteousness that comes from the fact that you’re posting on an internet forum about “the people” who will buy the game but not have internet access.
This defender of the weak bullshit needs to stop. Tell us about your experiences.
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“Three (or four?) days of chicken littles, amplified rabid liberals”
Wait, what?
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Guess I’ll not be buying any Stardock games in the future. Sad.
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Some of you guys complaining should actually try playing the fucking game. I just played 4 hours straight with absolutely no issues. I’m not sure what the big deal is here. Stop jumping on the goddamn Stardock Sucks bandwagon. I bet half of you haven’t even tried the game yet.
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Yeah, you have no issues so no issues must exist, right?
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Remarkably, nobody I know who’s playing it have encountered a crash either. I can’t speak for the people who aren’t playing it, for all I know it could be crashing quite regularly for them. Of course, they’re probably too busy talking to their invisible friend to listen to us though.
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Anyone not armed with a torch and/or pitchfork is an uneducated fanboy. Please commence poking them with torches and/or pitchforks.
RPS, we hardly knew ye.
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Anyone who points out legitimate problems with a game you like is a pitchfork-wielding ignoramus.
Welcome to the internet.
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Blah… This is just RPS sh*tstirring like a cheap tabloid rag.
Yes, Elemental has issues (many of which are fixed by the day 0 patch). No, Stardock didn’t “remove” the gamer’s bill of rights. Yes, the CEO lost his temper with a friend on a forum (for which he’s now apologized on the Elemental forum).
People love to get all up in arms about anything they can find. Go nuts over the USA’s inevitable invasion of Iran for profit if you just HAVE to be affronted about something.
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It’s capitalism, right? So what’s wrong about invasions for profit?
And for Stardock – they should be thankful to whatever gods or physics they pray, for such a tolerant and understanding client base. There’s really not enough bashing for that attitude…
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@Saiko
I’m sure that was sarcasm but just in case it wasn’t… murder for profit isn’t capitalism, it’s barbarism.
Aside from that, I think attacking independent gaming outfits like this is disgraceful. So the game isn’t a AAA title at release… Jeez f*cking give them a break.
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“And for Stardock – they should be thankful to whatever gods or physics they pray, for such a tolerant and understanding client base. There’s really not enough bashing for that attitude…”
It’s probably because we were told well in advance there’d be a Day 0 patch. When they started taking pre-orders in fact. I’d like to hope anyone who had issues would therefore not have pre-ordered, but there’s no accounting for human stupidity.
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Blaming things on an early release is ludicrous. The Day-0 patch isn’t supposed to be a patch that fixes a game, but should’ve rewarded players for their trust in Stardock. Now have not only Stardock forced people, perhaps unintentional, to use impulse to get their patch which this game obviously needs. They haven’t been so “open” and “honest” they have claimed to be in the past. I’m glad they still do refunds, but for Paradox and Valve games I’ve never needed them…
// Gutted 4x fan.
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People are split into:
1. I bought Elemental and it’s buggy, i’m outraged!
2. I bought Elemental and it’s buggy, but thank god someone has actually made a game like this again, i’m happy to wait a bit for the bugs to be fixed.
3. I bought Elemental and I haven’t had any problems at all.
4. I didn’t buy Elemental and i’m outraged!
1. Fair point, get a refund, and whinge all you like.
2. I agree, and i’m with you.
3. Lucky you, you sure you haven’t seen a few?
4. Shut the fuck up. (excuse my french).
I recently installed Empire Total War on my Desktop with Windows 7 and whatever i did the game crashed in the 3d battle, so i’ve had to upgrade from 2 to 4gig memory. Guess what, Elemental has crashed once in about 8 hours for me.
Does anyone here remember what the original Master Of Magic (The most similar game to Elemental) was like when it was released? I do, i bought it the day it was released and it was the buggiest piece of software i ever played. And yet MoM is also the GREATEST game i have ever played.
Give me a buggy MoM-style game than another Civilisation any day. As long as they fix the bugs over the next few months i know which out the two i will be playing in 5 years.
I may be in the minority and having made PC games in the past i know how difficult it is to test a game on every possible setup, but it’s the next few months i’ll be worried about rather than the first day.
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I ..I think I might await a demo.
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Galactic Civ II as of right now is really quite fantastic (although I’ve come to it 3-4 years after it’s inital release in the form of the ‘Ultimate’ release).
The incredible generic -ness of the plot, look and even name of Elemental makes it much less appealing to me.
Still, I’ll be well up for Gal Civ III when they get round to it.
People get too wound up about the release state. They do have a good record of supporting (some would say finishing) their games for years after release.
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People have already linked to Brad Wardell’s apology on his website, but he also apologizes and explains further over at Qt3:
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=2350238&postcount=2977
partial quote:
Ben Sones isn’t some random guy. We’ve been friends for years (heck, we’re even FB friends).
So yea, his comment on calling it an “early beta” really upset me. I acted rashly and I apologize for it. I shouldn’t have said it. But this was not me responding to just some guy in a thread.
There was another thread some months ago about Warlords Battlecry where I got upset with Tom (Chick) because of something he said. But if it were some random guy, I wouldn’t have cared. But it was precisely because we were are friends that it got such a strong reaction.
That is why context matters. I get flamed daily. I don’t care what Matt Gallant or whatever says but I do care a lot about what my friends say.
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Telling people not to buy a game is arguably a militant statement.
Contrary to what PC Gamer might believe, it’s not their job to argue whether people should buy games or not, only to educate them in making that decision.
Personally I don’t think they’re wrong, and I don’t the game is worth the price, but the fury against the Elemental team at the moment isn’t rational, and neither is the PC Gamer piece.
They aren’t covering a game, they’re just blatantly attacking it.
Wardell is already distraught that his game is falling well short by anyones standards, so faced with that blatant hatchet job, he tells them not to play his games anymore – I fail to see how that’s a scandal. I’d be a lot less diplomatic, and I certainly wouldn’t want those kinds of hacks playing my games, either.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/25/elementals-disastrous-launch-stay-well-away/
That’s a hitjob, not a serious article.
Not only does the passive/aggressive sarcasm reek of bias against the developer, but they address the lead designer directly? What does that have to do with professional journalism?
Anyone trying to pass that sort of crap off as a newspiece, in any serious publication (beyond Newscorp perhaps) would be handed notice the next day.
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It was not removed… that link was two years old… SD moved to a different system a year ago.
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Well, this is all rather sad. Not a happy day for RPS or Stardock.
But if I may go off topic: The CIV comparisons are a little worrying, anyone really recommend the game in the state its in to an old MOM fanatic looking for a nostalgia fix?
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It depends on what precisely you liked about MoM. The civilisation aspect is pretty much nailed. The spell list is a little lacking and they’re only just starting to make it less generic (which we’ve been bitching about since Beta 2 or 3), but it’s still got a lot of “same spell different colour”. The hero mechanic has changed, they’re more about supporting either your army or economy than being able to solo armies in their own right. And item forging isn’t in, but they’re talking about adding it later.
Best bet is to wait a couple of weeks for the demo and see how that takes you.
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Yes. I didn’t play much MoM, but my brother did. And after playing Elemental for a day or two, I eagerly recommended it to him. So I’ll do the same for you.
If you love MoM, than you shouldn’t have too much trouble dealing with some of the issues with this game right now. And the good news, is that it only gets better from here.
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@KidA: Yeah. Just wait until someone attacks a game I like. This hatchet job on a game I find buggy and obtuse is annoying enough.
Oh and nice pitchfork, btw. You rarely see one that dull.
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I really want to hate the CEO for his stupid and asinine comments, but would I rather NOT have CEO’s who post on forums? Nope, I’ll take the good with the bad. On one hand we get direct communications from the head of a game company, which is great, and on the other we inevitably get some asshole remarks, which is not so great.
Net gain, I guess.
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Someone say Derek Smart? /runs several miles away and jumps down ravine.
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Not much point in communicating with anyone if they don’t actually want to, you know, communicate.
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No. I can’t recommend it. I’m amazed the game was released in this state. It’s not finished. It’s not close to finished. Key systems (tactical combat) aren’t finished, other systems haven’t been balance-checked, and yet other systems are totally unnecessary and yet can’t be pruned at this stage in the game. The interface is a mess, the stability is nil, and the performance is grindingly slow. There is very little to recommend it.
That having been said, I’m glad I paid for it. Given the support that Stardock’s provided for its games in the past, I’d like to see them continue producing games. Going another seven months without a product… well, I can see why they didn’t want to do that: I doubt, given the duration of the break since the last game, that they have enough operating capital to continue to that point. I trust them to actually finish it off.
Unfortunately, even if they do, I have my doubts about the game. They seem to have designed it around a strict number-grind, without the exception-based ruleset that made MoM so interesting. I’m still pulling for the plucky little upstart (that screwed me out of $50), but I’m a little worried that the design is conceptually flawed from the beginning.
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That’s a shame, Exception-based rules, as you put it, add a huge amount to 4x games in terms of immersion. I dont really want a balanced game when I play these types of games, And i suspect the ridged ‘I am a game, hear me bleep’ design philosophy of stardock is why I found GalCiv3 a little vacuous. I suppose im more interested in the sim aspect and the emergent gameplay.
How is it for variety though? Ive heard the dreaded ‘star-treck aliens’ criticism floating around this comments section, I suppose I can never get my head around why fantasy 4xs cant have the same variety as the dominions series, even if a units ‘awesome but impractical’ it can be fun to roleplay (like the splendidly mean event beasties from Dom 3)
Either way, Ill keep a beady eye cocked on this one for the future
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” I’m a little worried that the design is conceptually flawed from the beginning.”
This is the kind of thing I need to know more about, before buying the game. I’m a GalCiv2 fan, but I’m not sure this will click with me on the same level. I read Wardell’s recent playthrough report on his blog, but I’m still trying to figure out if there is a great core game here, or just a bunch of cool ideas slammed together that doesn’t quite gel as an immersive strategy game. A demo at some point, would help close the sale.
On the Star Trek Aliens criticism… Maybe they’re just doing what they did with GalCiv… having similar factions and similar (if not identical) strategies to make balancing easier. And then a later expansion with wildly different tech trees and factions. With a new IP and ground-up design, I can’t say I blame them too much for getting the overall engine right before making the factions very different. That can come later, and apparently Stardock is all about the “you’ll like it, eventually” philosophy of game design.
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“They seem to have designed it around a strict number-grind, without the exception-based ruleset that made MoM so interesting.”
They’re starting to change that, we’ve already got spells and abilities which ignore the normal rules (hurl boulder ignores defence entirely now, the dragon abilities too, there’s character abilities which alter the hit ratio and similar). To be honest I’m not so sure it’s a number grind so much as they’ve simply combined a lot of things. The defence stat for example combines your armour and dodge abilities, and because it reports any hit that does 0 damage as a miss it’s impossible to understand whether it was your armour or dodge which saved you (which is annoying when you have a spell that adds 50% to your dodge chance – I still don’t know if that means it adds 50% to your defence or makes you 50% less likely to be hit in the first place).
“How is it for variety though? Ive heard the dreaded ‘star-treck aliens’ criticism floating around this comments section, I suppose I can never get my head around why fantasy 4xs cant have the same variety as the dominions series, even if a units ‘awesome but impractical’ it can be fun to roleplay (like the splendidly mean event beasties from Dom 3) ”
The playable factions are all human or humanoid for canon reasons. There’s non-human races in the game though (quite a few in fact), some of which you can recruit with the correct diplomacy techs. It’s nowhere near as varied as Doms 3 though. Essentially there’s a distinct difference between the kingdom and empires, but the four ‘races’ within those feel pretty similar and are distinguished only by a stat bonus here or there. The non-human recruitable races and the various summons are a nice touch, but they don’t really go far enough to feel that different (and the summons do a better job of establishing themselves as unique entities than the recruits).
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okay atleast i know i am supposed to blame the people they contracted out for the background for the boring races that are just dudes with different cloths and hair (kingdoms) or dudes with weird looking faces (empires).
i hope someone makes a mod that adds some variaty to those biznitches i don’t care if it conflicts wif da loar if players add some awesome races like those insect dudes from MoM/MoO .those dudes were way cooler then a grey dude with cornrows or some guys who looks like a cross between fu-manchu and jafer.
hopefully some modder can make some more diverse races because i know stardock sure won’t.
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25 September, 2010 10:00 a.m.
*Googles “rock paper shotgun” in search bar, clicks on first link, takes a sip of coffee*
*Starts reading article on Elemental*
*Jaw drops, eyebrows raise ever so slightly*
“Oh fuck I must have accidentally googled “Destructoid” or “Kotaku” or some other shitty gaming tabloid!”
*Eyes scan to URL address*
“Hmmm, my browser says http://www.rockpapershotgun.com…”
“Well maybe they at least checked the facts and will have some witty, but objective commentary after the jump.”
*Clickls the “Read More” button*
*Continues reading the shortest article in RPS history and wonders what happened to the context or substance of my favorite videogame news site*
*Types “Fidgit” into search bar and doesn’t look back…*
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Tom chick lookalike?
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25 September, 2010 10:00 a.m.
A prediction for next month?
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cool hi i’m from the future too. that article he was talking about is the one from the future where keiron does the elemental war of magic abcs. it’s pretty short.
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I always wondered who the hell types in site names into Google rather than using bookmarks or typing in URLs.
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Tom Francis lookalike?
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Michael Bolton lookalike?
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You Win!
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It was fun while it lasted.
http://www.tomfrancis.net/
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When is RockPaperShotgun going to retract or update this inaccurate non-researched sensational inflammatory article?
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What’s inaccurate about it?
Its been updated to reflect that the “Bill of Rights” is still available at its own site. It was released ahead of schedule, they are waiting on their code, if you look at the RPS forums and this comments thread there are people who feel that the game is still broken and unplayable (Say ACS a few posts up), and Brad did say that to a customer.
Now I know there have been some developments but the article still reports things accurately for when it came out with the update acknowledging that the Bill of Right is still about. RPS is run by FIVE GUYS, on a UK time frame, who have many other commitments. Just looking through their archive at other developing stories, especially heavily commented ones like this, I’m confident they’ll provide another update on this soon and when they get their review code they’ll pass on their feelings based off that. But this article does record what people genuinely felt at the time it was written.
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The mighty Kieron has updated on the QT3 forums. My god Tom Chick comes across as an ass.
Not sure who he is, Google states he once slated deus ex and presumably reviews stuff, and now seems to guard some forum or other. Now we’re childishly insulting people, who let’s be honest have expressed at least something of a balanced opinion rather than the evil slating people suggest.
Great Mr Chick, very classy. I’m sure you are industry respected and all, and have no reason to care about my opinion but as my second exposure to you in any capacity, name calling people out like that is unprofessional and a jerk move. Protect your friend, why not, but if you are too tired to post and represent a company then don’t post. You NEVER e-mail in anger, why the hell should you forum post, it’s naive in the extreme.
Anyway, the real reason for my post is that Quinns has nothing to be ashamed of in this and damned if RPS should give him any flack as he is a good writer. I’m not going to bother registering on the QT3 forums (whatever they are) as Chick seems too precious for this to be worth my time. If he is in some way respected for his past endeavours and has any bearing on these things then he needs to jog on. He started as a low level journalist too, frankly I don’t know if he’s got past this level as I’ve never heard of Tom Chick (whoever he is).
You have my support Mr Smith. There is something about Elemental that is really causing people to behave in a frankly shameful manner.
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Chick’s reviews are normally pretty good, but he’s acting like his forum is some kind of sacred cow. He’s got a lot of game developers posting there so something like this was always going to happen sooner or later; Qt3 is pretty well known in certain gaming circles and while he has moderated signup the forum itself is entirely public.
Having said that, nobody involved in this has come out of it looking good. RPS’s original take on the article was highly unfortunate. That’s been fixed now, but that’s a luxury unavailable to Brad Wardell, who cannot go back in time and unmake his post on Qt3. All he can do is apologise, which he has done, but that’s just damage control. Stardock have been bitten in the ass by their laughable bill of rights (which sounds good but was also never going to hold up in the face of a commercial reality, and they should have known better than to try and market themselves with it), and now Tom Chick is showing a ridiculously thin skin by taking the quoting of something posted on his – very large and well-known – forum as some kind of personal insult.
God, I love internet drama.
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Learn about Tom Chick.
Tom Chick was in nine episodes of TV’s smash hit “The West Wing.”
Tom Chick played Oscar’s homosexual lover Gil on the US version of “The Office.”
Tom Chick used to host a podcast with independent games developer Brad Wardell, President and CEO of Stardock
Tom Chick attended Harvard Divinity School and received a Masters of Theological Studies with a focus on the Old Testament.
All of this is true and the evidence is in Wikipedia.
For some reason, Tom Chick is the one games reviewer that all games reviewers seem to worship. Oprah is like the Tom Chick of daytime talk shows. So it has to hurt Quintin at least a little to be on the receiving end of such venom from Tom Chick.
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“My god Tom Chick comes across as an ass. ”
He always does, such is his nature. His “reviews” are nearly worthless. And yet, for some reason, his opinions are respected. It is a mystery.
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This was sort of my concern. Chick calling out journalists for writing stories based apparently on the fact he does not acknowledge their journalistic credibility is bogus, in what I imagine to be a small industry based on contacts.
It’s a disgrace to publicly treat your industry members like that and if RPS did it I would stop reading. If PCG did it, I would unsubscribe as no different to any work place, professional grievance should be sorted out privately. Quinns, who is starting his career, does not deserve to be held back by any conflicts with an unprofessional jackass.
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Wardell has responded to this article and the PC Gamer UK article on the Elemental game website. Update please, RPS?
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you know it’s nearly 2am in the UK where RPS is based, right?
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So I guess Stardock has exclusive content lined up for this game if you bought the book and bought it from Best Buy or Wal-Mart or whatever.
I’m worried that this legendary Stardock support that Stardock sycophants have faith in that will supposedly fix this game months from now will require me to pay $5 at a time for updates and patches disguised as DLC.
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So I guess Stardock has exclusive content lined up for this game if you bought the book and bought it from Best Buy or Wal-Mart or whatever. (Reference: http://forums.stardock.com/391239)
I’m worried that this legendary Stardock support that Stardock sycophants have faith in that will supposedly fix this game months from now will require me to pay $5 at a time for updates and patches disguised as DLC. I’m pretty much SOL since I (foolishly) pre-ordered the LE box and returning it will incur shipping costs (hell, I could’ve bought two Steam weekend deals or GOGames that I could actually play with that money).
Anyways, pretty disgusted. Never pre-ordering again (I thought it was “Limited”…wtf?). Possibly never buying a Stardock product or anything offered through Impulse again.
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Already announced that said content will be released free when the exclusivity deal (90 days) runs out.
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that book better be the best damn book ever written because i gotta have that exclusive content before everyone else and if this book isn’t a song of ice and fire 2: magic and dragons and stuff i will revolt and probably sell it on ebay.
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Who gives a fuck about Tom Chick.
He can go on hate classics like Deus Ex and Mass Effect 2 and no one will give a shit regardless of who frequents his forum.
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FYI:
Tom Chick is also a semi-regular panelist (along with Neuro-surgeon Bruce Geryk and History PhD Troy Goodfellow) on the strategy games podcast: Three Moves Ahead.
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You guys that are trying to minimize Chick with your “who the hell is Tom Chick?” posts are just outing yourselves as dilettantes. Tom Chick is a very well-known and well-respected games writer.
There’s good arguments to be made on all sides of this debate but attempting to dismiss one side altogether because of your own ignorance makes you sound like a fanboy and not a logical adult.
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Hardly, I stand by my initial input. I’m disrespecting Chick purely because he wrote:
“I shouldn’t expect from whoever the fuck Quintin Smith is”
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=2350892&postcount=3059
That is not professional, he has already written that Quinns is from RPS. That is just someone who thinks they are important, and perhaps he is, just using his importance to discredit someone else.
I call it as I see it – this is my second encounter with Chick and he comes across like a bully and a thoroughly unpleasant person. There is no excuse for belittling someone like that because you don’t like what they have written, especially when you are trying to uphold some for of “professionalism and expected conduct” pissing contents.
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Well, in this case his credential as a games writer is irrelevant. He is only involved as a hysteric forum moderator. Anyway, what was posted on the forum by Brad Wardell isn’t really the story here. It’s the slow police chase of the white Ford Bronco here. A fun diversion at most.
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seriously i have no idea who tom chick is, i thought he was jack chicks dad or something but apparently he’s a game dude but that’s it.
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oh he’s some forum moderator nm then.
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If Tom is behaving badly that doesn’t make him a non-entity – he’s a noted writer that people respect. Kieron would tell you the same thing.
Disagree with someone on the merits of their argument – don’t just hand-wave them away. It’s starting to look like American politics in here.
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” With a new IP and ground-up design, I can’t say I blame them too much for getting the overall engine right before making the factions very different.”
I can.
They want my money (and to pay full price– if this was on steam, like a proper game, I would absolutely be waiting for a sale), I want a complete game. Faction differentiation is part of that.
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No, it is not. Come on. Thats their DESIGN DECISION. They wanted a world that was not a photocopy of Tolkien with Elves and Dwaves and such – is is what they aimed for. You dont like it? Well, thats your right, but they dont have to code the design you want on it.
There are plenty more thing to point out as evidence of “unfinished”, like the fact that latest patch DID add more info on the campaing tutorial or removed the summoning book of magic for some reason. Not having the style you want is not.
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Good journalism starts with fact checking, not propagating hysterical hearsay.
Saying that Stardock rescinded their own Gamer’s Bill of Rights as the news headline(and still part of the URL name for this BTW) shows a basic ignorance about that subject, while trying to use that to drum up more drama for the grumbles of a vocal minority. Even the quote of rule two is dated, as the actual Bill of Rights has been fleshed out over the last two years. But you also need to take that right in context with the other rights listed. Rights 1, 2, and 3 all apply to the situation, and are being honestly upheld by Stardock. In this regard, there is ‘Nothing to see here, move along.’ But Mr. Smith seems intent on making something of this. This is bad soapbox material, not news.
There is no mention or link to the public apology that Brad Wardell made in regards to his comment on Qt3, taken out of context as it was. There is also an apology by his friend Ben a few posts later in the Qt3 thread about how he made a poor choice of words that Brad took wrongly, if anyone cared enough to research the thread before jumping to conclusions. This all happened two days ago, which in internet years, is old news.
There are a few people who have had some issues that Stardock seems keen on fixing. There are also a lot of people that are playing the game without issues or with a couple of minor things. Is this really news?
Bringing up one snippet of a huge thread without framing the context shows poor judgment and appears to be a desire to fan some flames. Maybe, cause it’s mentioned a couple times, someone is just throwing a tantrum cause they didn’t get their free review game to play. Maybe that should be the title, “Stardock snubbed us on swag, so going to fabricate something sensational!” BTW, did you know Obama’s birth certificate is a fake and he is not a real US citizen?
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Its an English blog, at the time of writing its 2:50AM in London.
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If you’d bothered to read the thread (on Qt3), you’d know Kieron posted several times… this story was an RPS Hivemind effort, and it should have been posted with the RPS Team byline, and not Quinns (his iron deficiency means he can’t take much punishment). So don’t single out Quinns for criticism. Also, the quote from Brad was not the main story, it was a secondary story, reported through the PCGamer article… as in “PCG go on to quote a post from Stardock CEO Brad Wardell… and here’s the quote because it aids the exposition of our story”. Also, the original title was “stardock rescind own bill of rights?”. Note the ?… it isn’t included in the URL, but it was definitely there in the title. It wasn’t claiming the bill of rights had been rescinded for definite in some furtive act to allow them to release the game unfinished… but its absence, along with the PCGamer (and RPS forum) criticism of the game, as being unfinished, raised questions about it. They raised those questions, for their readers, with a post, the main story of which was “PCGamer have criticised the game and raised these questions”.
However, I think it’s all moot, as far as having a dig at RPS. RPS reported PCGamer’s criticism, and PCGamer’s use of the quote. If anybody fabricated something sensational, it was PCGamer… but, they didn’t fabricate anything. They quoted Brad Wardells post.
Anyway… I don’t think any of that is the story… not RPS’s post, nor the PCGamer article, nor the quote. The real story is… a company that touts this Bill of Rights, saying gamers have the right to demand games aren’t released unfinished, have just released a game that many feel is unfinished, unstable, unbalanced and buggy.
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For the record, if RPS change the URL to match the *new* title, it breaks the comments thread and this comedy gold that is the Stardock Fan-vasion will disappear.
Of course, RPS would then be eaten alive for what amounts to a WordPress bug.
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This whole thing is so ass-backwards it’s unbelievable.
This, and the Gamer article, are not bad journalism.
You know what one of the key tenets of good journalism is? Right to reply.
RPS, and I assume Gamer as well, contacted Stardock for a quote on this story, they didn’t get anything back.
Stardock’s CEO had, at the time of writing, made one public statement about the matter, on the Qt3 forums. As such both stories quoted it. Gamer and RPS would have quoted him whatever he said, even if it was “we’ve had some issues with retailers breaking the street date, we’re working round the clock to push the release-day patch forwards, please try and bear with us”.
It’s good journalistic practice to quote any response the company has made in an article that’s negative about them. It’s not the journo’s fault if the only public statement the CEO makes has the effect of making him look like a gigantic asshole. It’s kinda unfortunate, but it would have been bad journalism *not* to include that statement.
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Stardock’s CEO had, at the time of writing, made one public statement about the matter, on the Qt3 forums. As such both stories quoted it. Gamer and RPS would have quoted him whatever he said, even if it was “we’ve had some issues with retailers breaking the street date, we’re working round the clock to push the release-day patch forwards, please try and bear with us”.
One public statement? Did you look at that thread at all? The offending post that was quoted is on page 82 of a thread that Wardell was actively a participant in. That is the real crux of what Tom Chick was ranting about: that PCG and RPS reported Wardell’s angry response without providing any context, background, or mitigating factors. Not that Chick’s level of outrage was called for, either.
Personally, I don’t think any of the parties involved here have covered themselves in glory.
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I doubt many people will read this far, but here’s my 2 cents.
Brad made some comments he shouldn’t have – likely when he was frustrated on a forum. Who hasn’t done that?
Stardock as a whole made a mistake in trying to get a game out when they shouldn’t have. It wasn’t ready, and thus broke their ‘code’.
Why is this such a big deal? Some people made a mistake as a group and a CEO mouthed off when he shouldn’t have. Who cares? I make mistakes all the time and probably say 4 things a day I shouldn’t.
So what if the game is buggy? Haven’t we seen a bazillion of those? Yeah, they messed up. Get over it. If there’s one thing I know about Stardock, they’ll not only fix it, but make it absolutely shine. Walk away, play some Mafia II or something else that floats your boat for a few months. Go back, let it auto-patch and enjoy.
BTW, I didn’t buy the game, nor do I intend to. I’m not defending them as a company nor am I a fanboy. I just think people should simmer down a bit, be patient, and cut a team some slack that’s clearly working really hard to fix a mistake.
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It doesn’t work that way. How it works is that I hear the game is buddy at release from my buddy. Then I and everybody my buddy informed don’t buy the game. Then the game completely fails to sell and the company goes out of business.
You can get away with a few minor bugs – nobody’s perfect. However, from what I gather here, Stardock released a completely unplayable game. Color that pooch screwed.
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Is how that sentence was supposed to go.
Also, an important omission here is that the reason why it’s so catastrophic to have an unplayable game at release is because the largest bulk of sales comes around a game’s release date. They might just patch the game to where it should be in a month or three from now, but by then everybody will have moved on to the next big thing.
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406 Comments in less than 24 hours and god knows how many page views: at least in the thousands. This is one of the most commented and read (speculation) RPS posts in recent memory.
1 poorly researched tabloid story
406+ Comments
Thousands of page views
The smile on the faces of RPS’s new advertising managers: PRICELESS
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Kotaku’s got this practice down pat.
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@unaco:
And yet I bet I could get 5 people at the drop of a hat that would agree Starcraft 2 is released as a buggy, unbalanced pile of junk.
Likewise, other people here have admitted they don’t consider the game unfinished and can play without any bugs (or a very small number). So if the article is about that, then why in the hell do they only show the negative comments and statements and completely ignore people who are on the other side? Or even, for the love of all that people hold holy, the people who are legitimately critical but not so idiotic/dramatic to go off the wall?
So either RPS is inept for not looking up the Gamers Bill of Rights ahead of time (including the fact that they’re still quoting old text that was changed long before Elemental got even close to release) or they’re blatantly biased by posting a piece discussing the unfinished state the game without any reference to how it might actually be finished.
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Forgot to tag on to my last statement before someone comes up with the “Stardock changed it for the release of Elemental line.” The quoted line hasn’t been part of the latest version as of at least Oct 08. http://www.1up.com/news/stardock-updates-gamers-bill-rights
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Two words for this
HOLY SHIT
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This whole debacle seems like a goddamned .plan discussion back from the 90′s
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I hope this blows over soon, my teacup is wrecked and all the tea has been spilled.
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Good journalism… bad journalism… take whatever you want. The game still sucks and I want my $50 back. I dont think that any amount of patching will fix it… its just not… fun?
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I believe it is sales@stardock.com you want to adress your request for a refund, not the comment thread here.
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Thanks for telling us what we can say here and what not. Now let me ignore you.
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I’m not telling him whether or not he can write it here but how to achieve his goal. He can express his annoyance with the game as much as he likes for all I care.
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This thread has everything. Rage, agressive personalities, bickering between bitterly-held opposing positions based on ideosyncratic readings of fragments of text… not to mention numerous instances of the “I’m leaving and I’m never coming back!!!” post, most sublime of the forum histrionics.
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They say that if you say “Brad Wardell” three times, all his fans show up to flame you.
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Whoooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaa… man.. At the end of the day the multiplayer part of Elemental is still disabled, and most interfaces are unintuitive, and the game feel a bit unresponsive because lack feedback when is doing things in background (and is a game that love to quietly do a lot of things in background, what in other games is a good thing, but in this one somehow give really bad surprises).
But almost everyone agree somewhere inside this there must be a good game.
If we all can agree these two points a) multiplayer is disabled, etc. b) probably this is a good game. Why 400 comments?
I have a theory, a fantastic one.
It seems the cause is pulling a comment from a particular forum. ..Qt3.
Who watch the watcher?, not RPS, seems. Qt3 seems out here to hunt journalist. So one thing you don’t do is labelling yourself as a target.
RPS because is a very open format, able everyone to post here, even Qt3 users. So is very easy (because of the openness of RPS) to get a flood of invaders. That is probably a good thing. But I don’t like wen the ratio noise signal is destroyed, and with all that much voices, so loud voices, is hard. This thread is full of voices criticizing Quintin, that is like shooting the messenger, and other defending the state of the game, that don’t need defending, no one say is a bad game (well.. except 1 or 2 guys that don’t like it, or for some reason don’t work at all on his comp), and we all can agree that some parts don’t work or are suboptimal.
If all, I don’t think this is worth all that mutch comments, this has been blow out of proportions.
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@Anin: got a quad core to and the game works fine, just saying that not all quad core user have a problem.
Won’t be surprise if Stardock stop making games after all this, I don’t understand why everyone trash the game like this, it’s the only game of its kind since Master of Magic… will be probably the last seeing the amount of hatred it gets here. Shame, I feel for stardock, personally I don’t understand the amount of flak they get, if one company really surprised me with their dedication to follow a game it’s them (and valve).
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What were the point of the 4 public betas that were held for this game?
Did they collect any data or do anything with tester feedback? They kept saying that the “betas are not demos” and they had some magical internal beta that was more like the intended game and then they release it in this state? (FYI, It crashes every 30 minutes and my computer’s memory usage shoots up everytime I end a turn until it runs out of memory).
‘sup widat?
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Right first off, the only build that might be critized was the one released on monday. SInce the 0 day patch its been fine. Perfect? No but its you know, stardock these people actually fix things. Did they maybe sin against their own much much much higher standers ?Eh probably.
But really they’re getting far too much scorn here, it’ll be fixed. It was fine on the actual release date and any lingering problems will be taken care of.
“but the bill of right harglblargl” Yes its not actaully a bill of rights though. Their support is still miles above any other company. Arguably valve but they’ve fucked up the entire tf2 weapon and hat thing so, yeaaah how about no.
Honestly i’m all for not getting ripped off and i’ll rage as much as the next man about codes and whatnot for online play.
But about these issues? Oh god world tiniest violin people.
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Ultimately, it boils down to making Impulse registration mandatory. As I said before, the GOG forums will have a field day with this, and you can argue that Stardock has definitely broken Right 4 (no third party downloaders required to play, however the only way to get the Day 0 patch is to register and install a third party downloader i.e. Impulse). Sure, you might get the vanilla game running, but it’s not going to be the same game as what’s promised on the box, from what I hear.
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Hmm. Has this comments thread surpassed the piracy and/or DRM-related ones in size?
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This game is a catastrophy. I have never seen such a bad game before. Elemental is a joke and Brad Wardell is an egotistical prick who deserves to go under with his two bit company.
I will never buy a stardock game again just like I will never buy a Paradox game again.
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99% of comments here are probably based on the pirate version, mine works fine.
Yeah the CEO of Stardick made a mistake, @ least he has the balls to admit it and act accordingly.
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apparently, you never visit the official forums. One suggestion, try looking through the support sub-forum.
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The reason they put out buggy games is they can use the updates (impulse) as a means of DRM enforcement. They’ve told me personally that their horseshit “gamers bill of rights” only applies to the initial gold version- which tends to be broken beyond playability anyways.
You say they’ve fixed their products with patches, I say piss off:
Sins still desyncs in multiplayer games… how many years and how many patches later?
I don’t think they have a clue how code multiplayer support- the shortcoming of all their recent titles is EXTREMELY POOR MULTIPLAYER SUPPORT.
Suggestion:
I’d cut the price of your Elemental game to about $15.00- with all the bad press, you really need to cross the “why not?” threshold. I lol’d at $50.00 after reading what people (including the Stardock CEO) had to say.
After all, you’re still getting people to pay you to help iron out your beta ;)
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good post and thanks for share with us
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