Frogboy

[quote who="HappyNihil" reply="77" id="3158223"]You are still not answering my question. I originally ended my post with "Questions that could potentially lead to some answers, other than what are or aren't good examples." but ultimately deleted it as it is more passive aggressive than what is appropriate. Perhaps I'm not making it clear, but to put it in the most impolite bluntly clear way possible: "Unless Elemental is the most intensive RAM ga

More memory isn't going to affect the game's graphics. It affects the size of maps, the number of units you can have, the number of different objects you can have. Play diablo 3 and ask yourself, given their budget why are the items you get so similar or identical? It's a memory constraint. It's why sins doesn't have a 4th race, it's why galciv map sizes top out.

[quote who="HappyNihil" reply="57" id="3157479"]Honest question from somebody with little technical knowledge: This is the first time I've seen any developer seriously considering doing anything 64-bit only. Why? I've played games with maps much bigger and holding much more data (even realtime updated) than Elemental and games that looked much better than Elemental (and that's an euphemism), why do you need more memory than anybody else? (ex

[quote] Addendum: Four of the most appealing Balance Corrections (IMHO ): + Experience gained from battle is now scaled based on world size + You only get free defenders if you founded the city + Objects that are hidden by FOW (Fog of War) are no longer

What you are seing is a bigbug in path finding got fixed. The ai didn't change, but it's ability to do as commanded changed. It'll take some rebalancing to deal with the changes.

Game design vs. AI design are often at odds. Players are very good at creating a very sharp tip to their spear. AIs, by contrast, are good at defense in depth. The general problem in FE, is that the current design gives a big advantage to the player with the sharpest spear and that's inevitably, the human player. Even in online play, that's how it usually sets up. In strategy games like Starcraft, Company of Heroes, or Age of Empires, the strategy

It's not going to require Steam.

Challenging remains the best AI level without AI cheating. But for it to get better, much of it has to come from me getting better at the game and watching how others play the game. So often times, when someone says "Why is the AI doing this?" it's because that is what I'd be doing in that situation. The player is effectively playing me except with lots of statistical analysis.

Hard is the same as Challenging except the AI gets more start up money and a 10% economic bonus.

I'm getting myself in trouble in certain forums ranting about the not so positive reviews of it. Frederick isn't at liberty to curse out reviewers for unfair scores but I am.

ONE: No it is not. TWO: It is a good game.

Any Stardockians reading this who are at the office, I will be splitting the office hives and I have two nucs.

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="321" id="3138789"] Quoting Mmrnmhrm, reply 313I'm curious, what is your background in marketing that makes you feel like you're an authority on how games should be promoted?Instead of addressing my specific points you request I provide my bona fides -- Ad Hominem. And claiming "...that makes you feel like you're an authority on how games should be promoted?" -- Strawman. If you disagree with my arguments (which are several

[quote who="Didden" reply="273" id="3138200"]Frogboy, As somebody who has followed this expansion progress regularly via the Journals since purchasing the original Elemental release, and ignoring all the horror stories and buying it anyway, I'm worried to see some of the responses in this thread to the feedback from players being rebuffed. My concern is, that you're once again, far to close to your creation, an understandable situation given the love, hard work and ef

[quote who="Trojasmic" reply="248" id="3137679"]Hi Brad, It seems we're getting a lot of repeat votes (same as last time). I know you're big on MetaCritic scores so why not create a poll that asks people to vote on what score the current game would get (i.e. 90). That might yield some more interesting results and you'd be able to quantitatively see if the game was getting better in public opinion with each beta release or not

It's about damn time.

[quote who="GaelicVigil" reply="225" id="3137338"]Brad: Your first and biggest mistake with the Elemental series was to give so much weight in decision making to the forum community. These basement-dwelling trolls will never be happy. Never. Ever. Taking these fans too seriously is usually a mistake. Although they tend to be louder than the rest of the fanbase combined, they are usually a decided minority in almost every fandom (though they often cl

[quote who="Hemmy245" reply="230" id="3137419"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 147Then why not do both yourself and us a favorite and go away? I do not take comments as personally as you do, I only expressed my opinion - although not in a very constructive way I must admit. How about you rather make a reply like this: "Our product is still in development and we hope some of the issues expressed here will be adressed to make this game as good as it can be"<

I'm wondering if it's a specific driver / ATI card issue. I've never seen anything like this and it's going to be something really hard to "fix" since it's some sort of weird hardware specific issue. I have an ATI card btw. So it may be a specific version of the driver or a tweak that someone's made to the catalyst control center.

My guess is documents/my games/stardock/fe

The ai in beta 3 now defaults to easy. I'll suggest we move it back to normal for the next update.

Typing this via iPad... Long story / short: I started stardock in college and made my first game as a result of of arguing tbs design on usenet. My background is EE, not business. So my motivation to make games is premised on arguing with other gamers. The game is a byproduct. [e digicons]O:)[/e]

[quote] However, Frogboy has to be smart to not let his anger and his posts get the better of him. Everyone has their days, but Frogboy you need to realize most of these posters give you money. Annoy or disregard enough of them and it will spread like wildfire and you will most definitely have to go start working on another franchise or game because this one will have a tough time reaching the audience you want it to. You've done the research... you know the 4X stra

[quote] The problem is that Brad said that the issues DragonRider pointed out are not things that Stardock cares about. [/quote] Can you point me to where I said something like this? First, as I've said elsewhere, it's Kael's design and he has some very specific city changes in mind for beta 4 which revolve around city specialization, fewer (far fewer) city tiles being used on the map, and an economic system that is tied to city level

[quote who="LNQ" reply="183" id="3136924"]Yep Brad's "not a game for you" comments to people who write constructive criticism with reasonable balancing ideas don't feel too good. Starts to feel a little like it was before WoM was released again. However FE is in a much, much better shape than WoM even though I agree with the balancing issues. Makes me think that the man might be exhausted from such a long and painful development process from pre-WoM to this day. Three years