You just described in exactly why they don't deserve awards even as you tried to defend them.  "even with all its faults.  Once the technical issues are resolved...will not take long to balance things....If not for the issues..."  People win awards by pulling off something outstanding.  They don't win awards by "almost" pulling off something outstanding.

SD shot themselves in the foot by choosing to release August instead of February.  Now it only remains to be seen what the cost will be to their sales figures.  If they are lucky, most people that goto Walmart and see the box will buy it, not knowing anything about the reviews or its rough launch.

I bought and played Civ4 on release. You are really stretching comparing it to Elemental's release.

Take off your blinders.

I'm not wearing blinders. Civ4 on release was a nightmare. The only thing it really had over EWoM was that it didn't crash -- it did have a pretty horrific memory leak though. Also the AI was a bunch of snot-slinging shoulder-biters. Diplomacy was utterly worthless. And modability was a pipe dream, because although you could easily tweak a lot of the settings of units, Mods often crashed, were generally unstable, and didn't load properly.

Perhaps you should take off your blinders. Yes, Elemental has a few crash problems that C4 didn't have, that's granted, but neither of them were running well. This same conversation about how unready X game was for launch went on with Civ4, for about a month and a long series of patches that never quite fixed the memory leak until Warlords came out.

Edit: Also if you recall Elemental didn't ship with two Disc 1s to anyone, manuals missing pages, pages in manuals out of order, or other discs just missing. >.> Just saying.

Again I would suggest this is an unfair assessment. At launch there were no plans to open up the Civ4 SDK to allow for DLL modding, so that there are no plans to do it for Elemental is notwithstanding. That came about in Civ4 because the Apolyton and CivFanatics guys gave a lot of really good arguments as to why it should happen, and Firaxis agreed with what they were saying and opened it up.

That is a fair statement, actually. I was working with the idea that the Python is intended to be unlocked once they finish converting it.

Actually, it wasn't a straw man, the post was not entirely about moddability, as is indicated by the first sentence:

It was about both.

Claiming a straw man is something anyone can do, and they often do, but usually if they simple say "that is a straw man" they're generally incorrect. If it's a straw man, discount how it is a straw man, in this situation you would be incorrect as he was very clear in the very first sentence that it was about both the bugginess and the moddability, which is why I addressed both.

I agree completely with the OP, however, it was little harsh

Blizzard is the other company I trust...and sort of Bioware, and people screamed for years for SC2. I don't play RTS but I am hoping for DIII sooner rather than later. The only game I played more than GC2 has been DII.

GC2 developed from a game that was fun but that I didn't think was quite as good as MoO2 but morphed overtime into the be all and end all of the space faring TBS game genre. I am sure Elemental will do the same to the fantasy TBS genre. Hell, I am really enjoying it now, though it's not that much better than HoMM 4 or AoW at this point.

I disagree. They could have held off on release and worked on it for several more months. Then when balancing, bug and polish issues were resolved they could have released through Impulse and other digital download sites. Then released to retail stores in February. Maybe not as much profit but according to Brad they had already broke even with pre-orders so every sale after is pure profit.

Bottom line is Elemental was released too soon and in a beta state. Stardock will undoubtedly fix it but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be held to task. Their own Gamers Bill of Rights speaks out against releasing unfinished products. And for those claiming Elemental has future potential let's not forget that games are judged on their initial release and not on what future patches, mods and features might bring. You can only judge what's there. Not what will be there in the future.

In the real world, purchasers for companies like Best Buy and Gamestop evaluate products before release and decide how many units to purchase for their stores based upon a variety of metrics.  If Elemental was sold as a "map editor" or an "incomplete game," these buyers would not purchase the game for their stores since there is only so much shelf space to go around.  To put it another way, there's really no market for PC games that rely solely upon modding, especially from a small developer.

People still play GalCiv2 for a variety of reasons, the main being that they are drawn to turn-based strategy games.  Another important one is that the PC game industry is largely dead.  The only companies producing PC games today are smaller companies that have a hard time getting a game sold for consoles (game quality, licensing fees, genre doesn't translate well, technical problems, etc) and mega-corporations that release "event" games every-once-in-while (Blizzard, for example, releases PC games only because their games do not translate to consoles very well).  Nearly everything else is a port or a game with a very low budget.  So, gamers are not given a lot of choice.  If the PC industry was thriving, it is likely that other higher-quality alternatives to GalCiv2 would be produced and people would be playing that instead of relying upon mods to keep them entertained.

2010 will go down as one of the best years of PC gaming in recent years, mostly because of the release of SCII and Civ 5.  I would include Elemental in that as well since it extends the PC brand of gaming.  Still, Elemental is buggy.  I can't play it for more than two hours without a crash.  It is not optimized and, despite Brad's statement that the game is "finished," it is not. 

Something "wrong" occurred during the development process of Elemental.  Perhaps the game was rushed out before Civ 5's release.  Let's be honest here.  A majority of people interested in Elemental are going to pick up Civ 5 since they are attracted to the genre: turn-based strategy.  So, Stardock wanted to rack up sales before Civ 5 since direct competition would probably lower its bottom line.  Again, nothing wrong with that: that's how most products work.

That being said, Stardock should have worked on supporting modding later and instead focused on making sure the game was stable and relatively balanced before release.  It should NOT have worked on multiplayer which, as we know, doesn't work.  Multiplayer in TBS games usually is disastrous and is NOT why most people by TBS games.  Again, we're talking about the average consumer.  The average consumer does NOT post on forums.  The average consumer is not really interested in a game's community (unless it is required to play the game).  The average consumer just wants a game that works.  They want a game that doesn't cause them headaches because they probably get enough headaches due to work/lack of work/kids/life.

[quote who="Lord_Asmodeous]



Edit: Also if you recall Elemental didn't ship with two Disc 1s to anyone, manuals missing pages, pages in manuals out of order, or other discs just missing. >.> Just saying.

[/quote]

EWOM had poor distribution and a lot of folks bought it via download; 2 disks you can return - many folks can't even find a retail copy. Besides that was rare event. Civ may have had printing issues but at least the manual was trifle more useful that EWOM's. ALtogether these are superifical arguments as they have nothing to do with the games themselves.

Civ4 was far more playable, complete and definitely more fun at launch. This isnt just a few bugs and crashes, it is about general poorly thought out and rushed designs. Civ4 didn't launch with entire features missing or not working, it was not a crashfest and certainly a LOT more visually appealing and a well thought out UI.

What is really dumb about these debates is that the bottom line is it provides and argument for publishers and devs to launch incompleteware because there will always be some kind of semi-plausible sounding excuse which rabid fanbois will vehemently defend. This is the ONLY industry that I can think of where "the promise" of a product is just as sellable as a finished one. We wouldnt buy pants with the zipper missing because we were promised an awesome zipper one day, a microwave without a door or a car that stop running every 1/2 mile. People would return these in droves and bankruptcies would follow. The only thing that allows the software industry to get away with this kind of bullpucky is that software by and large cannot be returned. It gives them a kind of witness protection racket. Notice how many games now rely on the hype +initial box sales then move on.

If you are loving EWOM, good for you, go have fun with it. However for many of us it is not fun and it is very broken,  I suspect a vast majority are in this boat. This debate would be  moot if we ALL finally said enough is enough and demanded an end to this kind of crapware development model. There would be no debate, games would sell or not based on their quality and what I would take home at teh end of teh day would have a reasonable chance of being a quality product rather than a throw of the dice.

RAT

About the same amount as those that are claiming the game is great, there are no problems and Stardock/Brad are the greatest ever. Face it. Stardock screwed the pooch on this one. I think if any other company had released something like this there would have been a sh*tstorm. Why not Stardock? Why not the company who touted a Gamers Bill of Rights which specifically said that gamers have a right to a finished product. All the fanboism in these forums proves one thing. You can put a turd in a box, sell it and someone will always think it's great. Elemental is unfinished, unpolished and not particularly fun. Maybe it has the potential to be all those things in the future but from where I'm standing the future is now. I didn't buy this game based on having fun with it 3-6 months from now. I bought it to be entertained now.

Stardock should catch hell so that it will never happen again. There's another thread in these forums asking when it's okay to review Elemental. Of course the supporters are saying after it's patched and fixed. My question is Why not now? If the game is so playable and fun why not review what was initially sold to the public. I think deep down people know that if the game is reviewed now in it's current state the reviews are going to be bad and they should be. There's just no defending the state of the game upon release. I have no doubt Stardock will haul ass to fix it but that doesn't excuse the way it was released.

Which category?  If you're talking strictly about 4x then maybe you're right...but I don't consider an award given because it's the only game in its category as being something to necessarily be proud of.  There have been plenty of new games this year in many genres, and more than enough to easily edge Elemental out of blanket categories like 'graphics',  'game design', 'best strategy game', 'polish', or 'best game'.  Warhammer 40K DoW2: Chaos Rising, Napoleon: Total War, starcraft 2, Arma 2: Op Arrowhead, Trine, Settlers 7...just to name a few that would individually beat it out in such blanket categories.  And just to head the inevitable "yeah, but those are from big box publishers/studios and shouldn't be compared to Stardock"...don't do Stardock the disservice of holding it to lower standards as you would other companies.  There are plenty of other games that have come out, and are coming out.  Keep in mind that just because they may be games you won't play, they still contend for the same awards.

Again, I want to qualify this by saying I do enjoy Elemental, I love Stardock, and the potential here is amazing.  But the sooner people admit that this launch was not good, and that the game has some very very big issues that should have been worked out prior to launch, the better.  You don't have to say it's a bad game...but lets not kid ourselves that Elemental is thusfar a smashing success, nor does it deserve any award or high praise for being an outstanding game.  Maybe it will in a year, but not as it sits now.

And you have the option to get your money back, and move on.  It's not like you are stuck with the game if it is not what you want.

Straight out of the box and patched up, EWOM is perfectly playable.

It's almost as stable as the final version of MoM and that's only days after release.  I've seen worse. (Daggerfall, anyone?)

In house and other testing is nice but you can never anticipate the compatibility issues and the sheer creativity in breaking a game when you have thousands of... testers.

I expect that it will continue to get better. Looking at the GalCiv history, that's hardly wishful thinking.

A limited number of features (like unit stats) can already be modded but that's a bonus. Unless modders get access to the scripts that drive the game, all mods must work within the given frames. So it would be a complete failure as a  Game Construction Kit. The modability is too superficial for that.

No idea where the Starcraft 2 comparison came from. That's not quite the same genre, except that it has graphics, too. SC2 is just another generic basecraft game, though. (with admittedly very pretty videos) Lasted 2 days and that was that. Next.