I agree with Brad.  As much as I throw out ideas and complaints, I would prefer Stardock take all of our ideas with a grain of salt.  Simply because as fabulous as I think my ideas are, I think some of your ideas are terrible.  But, I also know that from a third party perspective, all our ideas(mine too) are probably only marginally helpful at best, and obnoxiously worthless at worst.  But, things to listen to the forum crowd are things that Brad listed are bugs, balance, and UI problems.

I do perfer that original design picture over the current art style that you guys are using for both games. But that is an old argument and I am liking the game play of FE.  But wow that pic does look good

I agree. I watched the forums for a long time and the game seemed to keep shifting to accommodate user ideas. The only point that there was not alot of communication was the week or two before it went gold. No need to drudge up that fiasco, but it didn't really matter how good the gameplay was in 1.0 given all the technical problems. 

This beta is alot healthier. There was a moment there last month where the testers started throwing out extreme ideas with the delusion of changing the game, but that has died down. The trick with suggesting an idea is making sure it fits within the scope of the devs' vision for the game. Otherwise, just reporting the problem is enough. I try to make a distinction in my paragraphs between the problem and my personal solutions. There are plenty of developer choices that I disagree with, but I have to remind myself that it's not my game and I can probably mod it in later anyways. Like tile bonuses in tactical combat. 

The basics are looking good. Now make something nice out of it. And then give us the mod tools so we can screw it up

... and ponies.

Good point Brad. I guess that as a beta tester our main role is to communicate feedback about the problems we are experiencing with the game and the game-play. Then it is up the team to make use of that feedback as they will. Our beta-test suggestions are more about exploring ways around the issues than actually requesting changes so your ability to read between the lines and address the underlying causes is all that is really important.

BTW, I haven't seen any more news about the release of the next beta. I guess this week is out now. Has anything been mentioned?

@ frogboy

I think Dexterity should be to Archers what Strength is for Melee

I no longer think maps need to be larger. Only less total movement (no move 10 units, no +3 move traits for melee units (even if its only for the first round of combat))

-> and I agree with most of your E:WoM assessment.

Sorry, not buying it. I was there and I can dredge up threads over a dozen pages long where yes you implemented an "idea" but you didn't listen to "feedback". Key difference. Listening to feedback consists a lot more of just incorporating ideas your read somewhere.

When you announced going gold the "idea" wasn't that it was ready. The feedback I read was overwhelmingly that the game wasn't ready. I know you were scouring the web all over for "ideas", but you weren't spending enough time in the very beta forums reading the reactions (feedback) to a lot of those "ideas" after they were implemented. It was a huge difference between when I participated in the Galciv Twilight beta and the WoM beta.

I get this response all too often in the QA field as well. Many companies "take the idea" and then close their ears to QA, employees, and customers once management has "made the decision". It generally ends with lost sales, often layoffs and management coming back to QA asking what went wrong so we can repeat ourselves one more time.

I remember a crash report I submitted in beta 2 and was reproducible all the way through launch. By late in beta there weren't even responses to the fact in what going unfixed. The lesson I learned was that once you thought you had addressed the issue internally, you turned the blinders on to what your customers thought. I remember you took an idea about global resources in an off-topic thread and declared it a done deal after it stirred up a ton of controversy and ignored all negative feedback. I'm sure you had your reasons, but don't call it communicating or responding to your beta testers. I remember the discussion on the games economy you solicited before beta launched that went on for what seemed like dozens of pages only to in the end announce you were going with "None of the above" and not soliciting feedback on your new "idea". It isn't that you don't need a disciplined design approach, but if you ignore the feedback you solicit from beta testers how can you expect not to get negative reviews when the game releases? That the negative press reviews surprised you showed how out of touch with what beta testers were saying on these very forums.

If you think the problem with War of Magic was that you borrowed too many ideas you learned the wrong lesson from all the people who warned you not to launch. The problem was a lack of real communication with your testers and a head in the sand management mentality.

You are definitely doing better on the design discipline with Fallen Enchantress, I reserve my judgement on listening to beta testers as we see how the beta releases evolve.

I'd prefer the best of Civ IV(FFH2), Medieval2: Total War, and Warhammer40k

Don't forget Pool of Radiance...

It has died down because the devs stated that those ideas were basically redirected to the garbage bin. That means one who thinks some of the issues are truly deep and can't be solved with just a touch of balancing here and there has to give up and just wait and see if he was right all along.

Actually, I do agree with Brad that trying to cram every suggested feature into the game is a recipe for disaster. I do believe that that problem may have tainted WoM, to an extent. 

But please, don't tell us that the initial WoM's design was "basically MoM". Not one of things that made MoM MoM was to be found in WoM (no pun intended). If there ever was, it was erased before release. We can't pretend now that WoM's only problem was that "too many things were added". If that were true, removing features (which has been done extensively since release) would have given us something at least reminiscent of MoM.

Were you here several years ago when Elemental was being thought up? As I recall, the game did start out as MoM and the community, most of whom have since left, wanted the game to be significantly different. But this thread isn't about WoM. If people want to rehash the past, there is a subforum for that. Please use it.