Really? Do you seriously believe that?

Then tell us about these problems that you can directly trace to "fan" intervention. I mean, you must be thinking about specific problems with Elemental that were directly caused by the "fans", right? Not just making sweeping statements.

Stardock has made lots of decisions in this design that ingore fan suggestions that are not in the direction of the overall view of the product.  They seem to only incorporate those that make sense.  I'm happy with the willingness to re-do a lot of things that appears to be "done" in order to fundamentally improve them.

While this is certainly something to look out for, I don't think that's a problem here. Elemental has always been pulled in too many directions, and since release has begun to become a much more cohesive game. The opposite would have happened if the fan dumb theory held sway here. Much more people are happy now than were at release.

I think your fear is unfounded. I believe SD knows what they are doing vis-a-vis fan feedback and its implementation in the game.

Thats bull, the AI is very much improved since release.  It's far from great, but at release it was completely retarded.

i agree. i'll happily take this seriously if some good examlples can be supplied. the minor factions thing is hardly that significant.

on the other hand i can think of plenty of things that people have been saying since beta, that have finally been acknowledged, like the paucity of stats and the flaws in combat speed and 1dN

This is wordplay. Relativly, AI was improved, but there is no visible changes that change playability. 

  Evolution is fun & bloody at times, just like revolutions. I think its awesome they listen & ignore people all at the same time. It shows me 3 things about them.

1. There human (heard a rumour some may be mutants & aliens)
2. They have there own unique vision (just like everyone else^^)
3. They like playing games (what sane person doesn't?)

  Now, I to feel as though I've been pulled & pushed in numerous directions, but you know, its been more fun that buying some of the trash games out there from other companies that never fully fix them, change them or improve them, while demanding that we give them our 1st borns soul to be allowed to play said game. It does feel better than ~only~ being a credit card number in there eyes.

   So, regardless that EWoM has had more than a few ups & downs allready I'm looking forward to seeing what it becomes down the road.

PS: Stifling the free flow of ideas & information is bad... better to be heard & ignored than never heard from at all. [e digicons]:karma:[/e]

Hahaha what?  no visible changes?  do you know what ai is?  How the hell would you visually see changes.

Stardock should only listen to trolls which are obviously the only ones with a brain. The more they insult Stardock or treat them as ignorants without a personality, the better their feedback and more valid their points. (even if that includes saying that Elemental should be an FPS)

That's just my opinion as "higly experienced human being". (which means that you all should bow down to my wise words)

I very much doubt that Stardock take all of our suggestions blindly and just throw them into the game without thought.

Don't forget that Brad is this games biggest fan as well as being the CEO, if he doesn't like the implications of an idea I highly doubt we'll see it in the game regardless of any amount of pressure from the community.

Problems, as i see it, in order of how much it hurts:

Weak AI

Tech is only good for a few techs, most of the tree is useless or stepping stones to good techs. Also, poorly labeled.

Magic is only good for a few spells, the other 95% of the spells are junk.

Unit design is pointless, as max armor/weapons is best option in all cases.

Champs are all clones(bland clones at that) with tiny stat differences.

Terrain is bland. Its like a perfectly flat board with certain zones(mts and oceans) declared off limits, with an even distribution of goodie huts/resources across it. This makes every map feel the same.

Population/materials/gold become ignorable, typically in that order, as just playing the game naturally you get so much you could never spend it. While metal remains rarer than ancient quests sites that can win the whole game. Crystal seems totally random, starve or be buried in it, but never a reasonable amount.

There are a lot of other little things, but those are the things that jump out as me as really hurting the game the most.

The team at Stardock take all suggestions made anywhere on the Interwebs and put them into a numbered list in the order they found them. They then implement every suggestion that falls on a prime number, and then every suggestion with a number that corresponds in any way with Mickelmas Tuesdays on the calendar.

Finally, they run all the suggestions through a shuffling algorithm so that the words interweave into new and more interesting suggestions, and then start the process all over again.

e.g.

Implement new bear-cavalry goodie huts with epic magic dynasty screens that rape shards and cast elemental city-spam on Frogboy after Janusk is black with specialists in raze-city research outside the ZoC including more MoM for scarce food cheerios refund shit.

So you see, Stardock don't just listen to the opinions of the fans, they even listen to opinions that don't exist. Pandering to fandumb? Bah! The only way to be successful is to try to be everything to everyone, some things to no-one, and nothing to someone. This may sound contradictive and maybe even impossible, but the fact is, this is the incomprehensible genius of Stardock at work, and it is what will inevitably make Elemental the GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME spent between Procipinee's AI breasts in the Lost Library of boolean essence using a broken war staff dodging unit abilities from FFH balance issues.

[EDIT] Damn it Stardock! You can't use the shuffle algorithm on my post while I'm writing it!!