Stardock's new game "Elemental: War of Magic"

[MasterSmithFandango]

Patch is out... playing now.

 

[Zed]

Patch is out... playing now.

And how is it?

I'm still waiting a week or so.

 

[MetalCraze]

Takeda Kenshi is an example of a dumb consumerist sheeple thanks to which we have games released in such an awful state and the only things that get fixed are bugs (sometimes) - devs got the money anyway.

 

[not an artichoke]

Because developers always have infinite time and money with which to push out a perfectly polished game. Especially indie/small time developers who try to make games that actually aren't shit.

As long as they're committed to patching and improving their games a la Paradox, I have no problem purchasing on release day, warts and all.

Anyway, the game's pretty fun so far. I've been getting a few crashes, but autosave means that it's just a minor inconvenience.

 

[Shannow]

Because developers always have infinite time and money with which to push out a perfectly polished game. Especially indie/small time developers who try to make games that actually aren't shit.

Burn the strawman!

They're patching now, aren't they? So what would have been financially better:
A rushed release with lots of people whining about the unfinished condition and general bad press?
or
Waiting another two weeks to release a far more polished product with a lot less heat and better press/consumer impressions?

Anyway, I'm happy that I'm saturated with games atm. When I finally get around to playing it this turd will hopefully have been polished into a diamond.

 

[MetalCraze]

Because developers always have infinite time and money with which to push out a perfectly polished game.

Not my problem

Especially indie/small time developers who try to make games that actually aren't shit.

Not my problem

Hey man here's a half-baked pizza. Please pay me money now while I'll take a few months to bake it for you

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Got a torrent of it now along with "A day 0 patch". Since there have been something like 3 fucking day 0 patches spread over the past few days I have no idea if this is the latest and greatest or not, but what the hell. I'll look at it at least.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Latest version is 1.05. Anyway, the patch does fix a lot of the slowdowns and other issues, although there's still a pretty rough memory leak.

Anyway, defense of Stardock... the release date was supposed to be Tuesday. It wasn't until last week when some stores started selling the game early that they decided to release the game early on Impulse to preorders. Basically, the two days of bitching shouldn't have happened, because the game shouldn't have been released yet. This slightly delayed the day 0 patch, which fixes a lot of the performance issues in the box version.

And with a game like this you know you're going to get a lot of post-release support. I'm not only referring to patches, which all PC developers should offer, but also more content. Ultimately, I think the game is good, but far from flawless. Admittedly I can't compare it to MoM or AoW since I've never played them, but for a Civ clone with magic, it's not bad. And the game is insanely customizable. There's a lot of game here, and while you will get some performance issues just like the release of every PC game ever, the day 0 patch seems to have fixed the most crippling, and continuous patching for performance is expected over the next couple of weeks. All in all, I'm not displeased with my purchase.

 

[Haba]

Hey man here's a half-baked pizza. Please pay me money now while I'll take a few months to bake it for you

Which is the bigger moron here, the guy baking the pizza, or the one who spends all of his time going around shoddy pizza joints to complain at the customers for being "dumb consumerist sheeple" and at the pizza bakers for making such shitty pizza.

 

[Shannow]

Hey man here's a half-baked pizza. Please pay me money now while I'll take a few months to bake it for you

Which is the bigger moron here, the guy baking the pizza, or the one who spends all of his time going around shoddy pizza joints to complain at the customers for being "dumb consumerist sheeple" and at the pizza bakers for making such shitty pizza.

If you put it that way, the baker is a dumb asshole, the consumers are dumb sheeple and the guy running around, criticising the bad conditions is a hero.
Are you sure you want to depict skyway as the hero?

 

[Mortmal]

Installed 1.05 and ... its even worse, theres definitvely many sycophants on stardock forums , no way you could defend that game int his shape.
Reloading crash, moving unit crash, looking at city crash, oh i somewhat managed to succeed in moving unit and now i can enter tactical combat, but the action points of the units are not refreshing after end of turn., all of it laggy slow, without showing any 3D greatness.
thats lot of whining ???I am supposed to just accept it and wait, not only they delivered and half baked pizza but then came back the next day to shit on it.

 

[Annonchinil]

Is the tactical combat any good? How is the AI?

Also isn't it odd that the reason that there are no random maps is for multiplayer balance, but there is no tactical combat in multiplayer? Didn't the developer also state that you should not buy the game for the mp because that is not where the focus is?

 

[Mortmal]

The tactical combat work maybe 1/3 of the time, and no it isnt even good, you have to check the tiles one by one to see if they have any defenses benifits as its not even visible and once fight started they dont manoeuver, they stupidly rush one unit. Your spells are bland you have nukes, some buff up , but i am not even sure they are working, spell damages are odd to say the least the tooltips are misleading , theres no way to know if theres even some magical resistances implemented.
You have an attack power a defense on each unit but as far as i saw no specific resistances nor abilities, if there is its not documented.Is a fire elemental vulnerable to ice ? it doesnt seems so the fire elemental can even cast ice spellls .

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Tactical combat is okay, but honestly it would have been fine without it. I ended up playing for about 4 hours last night and had a really good time, although there are still plenty of flaws with the game. They've released another small patch this morning to fix other performance issues, I believe.

 

[Ruprekt]

Would i like this if i couldnt get into galciv 2?

AI is irrelevant to me as I'm a retard

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Eh, it's not really the same type of game as galciv 2. I think they're releasing a demo in September, so you can check that, or I'm sure TPB is hosting a demo now, too.

 

[Zeus]

Also isn't it odd that the reason that there are no random maps is for multiplayer balance, but there is no tactical combat in multiplayer?

It wasn't just for multiplayer. I believe they said it's so, even in single player games, you don't wind up miles away from all the goodies (resource squares are very important in this game, I don't even think you can build farms without them, so it's not like Civ IV where any green patch is fertile), or totally surrounded by 5 out of 6 opponents, etc.

That being said, I'm all for true randomization, and I can't wait for them to add an option that removes the hand-holding.

 

[forgotmypasswordagain]

i'm soooo excited i'm about to whine and complain soooo much golly i love internet

So you do realize (right?) that as it stands now this game is as bad or worse than most of the Eastern European games that are so frequently and so mercilessly castigated on the codex?

Bugs are as bad, AI is as bad, world is at least as boring, tactical combat is just as tedious, interface is as lousy, and it too is inexplicably lacking in genre-essential features...

yet another wait-about-a-year-to-play-let-alone-enjoy game. How can one excuse that on the basis of a release forced two days early? I mean...it doesn't make any fucking difference, no. I'm playing 1.05 too and it's still shit.

Even if it's patched and modded, I don't seeing it becoming actually fun without an expansion pack or sequel or something to overhaul it. I've played about four or five hours and I haven't found anything to enjoy about the game in all that time.

there's nothing in this that AoW and MoM don't still beat - including graphics. some fabled series of future patches will not be your messiah, stardock's whole approach to design just missed the mark totally on this title. If I thought its problems could be patched out then I wouldn't bother getting all about this game but for so long it sounded like it was gonna be so fun and then....

i think demigod was better and well we all know all about demigod

ok my asthma inhaler is running outta juice so i better stop ragetyping now
anyway thanks for letting me cry into your collective bosom rpgcodex

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

ere Stardock's Brad Wardell responds to a complaint saying: "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."

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Yeah, I saw that and it pissed me off. Especially after that one dev of Star Ruler came to the forum and apologized for the state the game was released in.

 

[Shannow]

ere Stardock's Brad Wardell responds to a complaint saying: "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."

Reverse psychology or what? At least other devs (eg Piranha Bytes) have the grace to be contrite about releasing buggy messes. But then, they at least have the excuse of having the publisher breathing down their necks.

Seriously fucked up.

 

[MetalCraze]

Brad Wardell just says what all other devs are afraid to. He's an asshole and that's why he's cool.

 

[ricolikesrice]

i havent really followed elemental, hoping the game would pleasantly suprise me when its out but i just read somewhere that it has only a handfull different races which are not even that different at all, i.e. just different coloured skin?

if thats true (can anyone clarify ? )then MoM "spiritual sequel" my ass, bugged or not.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Whats with Stardock and having awesome premises for games and then churning out crap? Demigod could have been awesome, but had terrible balance and few heroes with little choice in how to play them. SoaSE is something people have wanted to see for ages: a real time 4x. But again, very little variety in gameplay, with lots of useless tech and ways to waste your money in game, and no real difference between one side of the tech tree and the other, or between races for that matter. Have heard bad shit about Galciv 2 as well. And now I'm hearing nothing but bashing for a MoM clone, how can you fuck up something so simple? Rip off fucking MoM and you're done. Tons of units, items, heroes, spells, races, ways to build cities up, all vastly different from eachother. Even with the ancient graphics, shit
AI and assload of bugs it's still worth playing.

 

[Achilles]

They should probably stop trying to make good games and start churning out the same polished turds as everyone else.