Oh, god, thats a little much.  I dont think we are getting 50$ worth of expansions nor are we the f'ing Mayflower colonizing a brave new world.  We are getting probably 30$ worth of expansions and helping shape how they are going to develop.

Yep, though those of us who are still waiting (mostly for a demo just to see how well my older machine will run the game) can still help shape the direction even without playing the game

I'm going to buy it at some point for some price.  Whether that's as soon as the demo comes out, or after the 1st expansion, or even later doesn't restrict my ability to cipher the discussions over existing mechanisms, let alone adding my 2c about changes to existing mechanisms.

I see the potential in this game, and it's engine, for epic greatness.  And from Stardocks record, I see that they are an outfit willing and able to make it so.  So yeah, I do think that early sales help to usher in a new age of strategy gaming.  For me, I see Elemental becoming what the Civ series was ++. The Civ series was everything to me.  At long last I see a successor to my most favored game of all time.

Well, hope you're right.

We all do.  The question to me is how long it takes, because the current CiV direction seems to be the wrong one for my tastes.

To put things in perspective, I worked on GalCiv pretty much daily from 1993 to 2008.   Elemental is something that is going to be part of our core game line for years to come.  

Okay I wouldn't go that far. lol. Jeezy Creezy, man.

Put it this way, I payed some 90$ (limited box & shipping) for this game, and still don't regret it one bit. I've been playing on and off for a month+, bugs or not. Take, on the other hand, a new game that just got released: Front Mission Evolved. I played that for the whole 7 hours that I needed to beat it, and I don't think I'll ever be touching it again. Sure, it was stable, and didn't crash... but if you look at the value it provided versus Elemental... I don't think there's even a comparison.

Seriously, this is a $20 game as it stands.  If I had paid $20 for it, I could easily overlook the sorry shape that it's in (being generous, it should be in mid-beta).  Having paid $50, I feel used.

If it was even close to being a $50 game, I have several friends to whom I would recommend it.  As it is, I am torn between wanting to warn them not to buy it, and being ashamed to admit that I already did.

You can't actually count promises of future freebies as delivered goods.  "A bird in hand," so to speak...  If they need investors, retail stores are not the right place to be looking.

I'd say it's somewhere in the $40area at the moment. I've played better games that cost less, and I've played worse games that cost more.

nniles, I do not agree with you regarding your idea that "what we have now is what you buy". Future updates are a huge part of what you purchase today. Some games will release almost nothing at all. Some games get supported and updated for years with meaningful stuff. Now, you might not VALUE future updates very highly, but that does not mean that everyone agrees with that evaluation.

I for one am sick of buying computer games for $50-60 and get one map and crash fixes after release and that's it. I will admit that Elemental certainly needed a lot of those things just to get up to par with a standard game, but as of right now? Not so far away.

Personally I believe that if I am not sure about a product, I should not buy it. I also believe that companies try to sucker people in with things like these free expansions. It's an obvious marketing ploy, and frankly I find it annoying to the point of patronizing the customer. If it were any other company, I wouldn't have bought the game, because the company has built a layer of trust with me personally - you might not share it, nor do I expect everyone to think the same.

Frustration is fine and all, but if you haven't gotten $50 worth of fun out of this game yet, you're pretty cheap.

And I make cheap people look like tycoons throwing away their money on booze and cheap <insert partner of choice>.

There was plenty to be mad about with the game; they've done better, and seem to be continuing to do so. I wouldn't call it a 'must have' game...yet, but if you seriously didn't find $50 of fun in this thing to date, you value your time very little. If I get 8 hours out of a game, I've recovered my costs plenty. If I enjoyed 50% of that time, even more so.

2 Hour movie with spouse: $22, Dinner: $20, Sitter: $30

4 Friday nights of 3-4 hour Elemental playing together: $49.95.

And I'll get to keep playing this for months if not years. I'm not excusing anything else, I'm just saying there's easily $50 of value in this game.

Discount????? Get a discount!!!!!  I want to sent Stardock some money   for all the extra work they've done and are going to do.  Nice going guys

I find this thread amusing. I live in Australia, where we can expect to pay $90 for most games, and up to $120 for AA titles. Snapping this up online for $50 was a bargain.

As for if something is worth the time, I just do the "net time gain/loss" experiment. (The price of the game)/(how much money I earn an hour at work) = number of ENJOYABLE hours of playing a game.

Elemental is doin' mighty fine on that calculation.

All I can say is Left for Dead, It was broken when it came out, still broken and passed over for L4D2, thank the gods of gaming I bought it during their Christmas sale! $7.00 US was really all it was worth. on the other hand we have quotable post from the owner/lead AI guy and developer that this is a child he won't write off. Also Frogboy said it will never be Finished and with the easily modifiable XML code even a hardware monkey like myself  can make usable content for the game! I really don't see the issue of the OP! Must be me that is broken!

I remember $29.99 for any intellivision game.  And that was cutting edge grahpics in the early 80's.  That's like $100 in todays money.  I can't believe games are so cheap and people demand so much for the small amount they really pay.

A very, very bold statement ! I do not dare say that you are wrong, but I do hope that the Future will prove you ... right. 

Allow me, at the moment, to be a tad skeptical -- considering that I perceive GalCiv II as being a masterpiece.

Because that's the market games live in. It's an inappropriate comparison to going out to a movie or buying dinner.  You need to compare the games to other games, same market.

Whatever elemental is worth is obviously a personal decision anyway, I don't find it very illuminating to hear other people divide the price by the hours they spend playing it anyway.  Maybe you'd have gotten more enjoyment spending those hours playing something else.  Who knows.  Who really cares.

My personal stance is to stop buying what I consider unfinished games.  If you buy the 'we need to support the developer by buying stuff that isn't ready' line, good for you.  What else is there to say?  I'm tired and frustrated by the industry, DRM, Steam, unfinished products with the promises of patches, DLC, ...

I'm voting with my wallet, and I'm holding everyone to the same standard.  Sorry Stardock, sorry 2k, sorry paradox, sorry...

Put out a demo so I know that it runs well on my machine, and put out a game which works and doesn't require immediate fixes to address balance or stability or whatever.

Maybe that's unrealistic of me, but at this point I don't really care.  I've got enough excellent games which have gone through their own development processes such that i don't *need* to replace them with frustration and annoyance.  I'll wait, let you lot sort it all out and take advantage of a better product when it's ready.  Be that a month, be that a year.

Wesnoth and Angband and DF and ... all free.  All fun. 

*deleted*

Where's my cheeseburger? I paid $90 and the top piece of the bun isn't on there. I remember when cheeseburgers were $2.00 and they didn't forget the top piece. Next time I will wait until the fast food restaurant can give me a demonstration of a cheeseburger, and I will eat that demonstration, and if I like it, I will buy a non-demonstration cheeseburger. Don't insult me by offering me free fries and a coke. I want a discounted rate for a discounted cheeseburger, or I will regurgitate onto your face in exchange for my refund. No, I don't want you to apologise and kindly place the top piece on my cheeseburger so that I can eat it and enjoy it - That doesn't solve the problem! I wanted to enjoy my cheeseburger from the beginning, but you didn't turn back time for me you bastard! What do you mean you're not perfect? How did you not realise that the top of my cheeseburger wasn't on? I thought you were omniscient! How do you sleep at night when you've completely ruined all my cheeseburger hopes and dreams forever and ever? I am so upset. Do you know how upset I am? I am really very upset. Your failure to realise the importance of cheeseburgers in my life has made it so that I cannot sleep without picturing you writhing in agony from having a hot poker shoved up your rear end whilst you are being crucified and whipped with a tightly woven poison ivy coil!

...Wait, where am I?

This would maybe a good suggestion if it came after 1.1 or 1.3 (bug fixes to 1.1).

At this point in time and development it would be just stupid for marketing reasons alone.

I dont think Stardock is stupid, sometimes a bit overconfident, but not stupid.

You are a cheeseburger. The where is not important. Time, space, and speed are relative so all that matters is the cheeseburger.

I wonder if Elemental might lead to a Civ alternative, as in a stone-to-space-age TBS.  While I am kinda hooked on hex tiles now, Elemental has two really big things going for it that Civ lacks:  first, end turns don't take eons and second, you can customize your units to make what you feel is an optimum amount of firepower, armor and cost.

What cheeseburger? What are you on about? I don't even like cheese! Also, while you are entitled to your personal opinion, I would have you know that Time, Space and Speed are not in fact relatives, just really good friends. I know this because I happen to be quite close with Time. We served the Empire at many distant posts, until they all got woodworm. 

Entertainment is entertainment. You have the right to do whatever you like, I'm merely pointing out that you place a pretty low value on entertainment and more importantly, your own time.