Firbolg

[quote who="BoydofZINJ" reply="93" id="2756780"] Quoting tetleytea, reply 67Another observation: How many Gamestops and BestBuys opened at midnight to release this game?[/quote] That makes absolutely no sense. Major retail chains do midnight releases for mainstream titles that are predicted to sell millions of copies and typically have budgets of over $20M. As for marketing heck the marketing budget for MW2 (~$150M) was 3x the dev costs (~$50M). Outlying the kind of marketin

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="90" id="2756707"] With all due respect, Frogboy, this is a bad time to try and use flowery language. Sadly, there is not a "world of difference" - the bottom line is those people are out of a job. The only difference is that "terminating" is done because an employee essentially screwed up majorly (and usually doesn't get qualified for unemployment because of it), while "laying off" is done for reasons outside of their performance. So, while financially for t

[quote who="tetleytea" reply="67" id="2756501"]Another observation: Before this news of layoffs broke out, Stardock wasn't doing Elemental for the money. The bulk of SD's revenue comes from non-game products, and Elemental was more of a hobby, a work of art, and a gift to the community that they were going to evolve on an ongoing basis. Now with this new news, the layoffs were caused by a reduced budget outlook due to a lackluster launch of Elemental.<b

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="50" id="2755564"] Under the current syste, the spell of making is a 20 mana spell. That's like 3 chain lightning spells. There's nothing to "save up" for. It also drastically hinders any sort of real POWER in the spells as they stand now. One of the funnest things in MOM is the anticipation of being able to save up to cast something particularly nasty.[/quote] I'm personally fine with the shared mana pool. But if one wanted to avoid that but

[quote](on an unrelated note, why arn't they counted as 'indie'? just because they make lots of money?)[/quote] Because they're big enough to get retail distribution and shelf space, they're also a publisher of other peoples games, and they own a digital distribution platform. For a start.

Perhaps minors should not have sovereigns, and it's that key difference that makes them minors. Since they don't have a militaristic magic wielding leader they're content to stay in their single city. But that city should be upgraded as normal and have something special about it (more than just a single crystal production). There also needs to be something that makes minors useful to keep around so they're not just conquer bait. Something that makes keeping them around valuable enough that co

[quote]The elemental spell books (earth, air, fire, water) will get moved out of character creation and into the tech tree so that players can determine what spell books they want. [/quote] This sounds not so great... I can already determine which spell books I want. The problem is that there is little to no trade off for picking them and not enough difference between the books. Moving the spell books into the tech tree only makes things worse. Rather than having to spend a (what coul

[quote who="Tridus" reply="53" id="2755083"] Nobody has done it because it's incredibly dangerous. MoM at this point has a ton of nostalgia tainted love where its numerous and glaring flaws are completely ignored. Any game that attempts to be MoM 2 has to absolutley NAIL it perfectly, or they'll be crucified as being a horrible sequel no matter how good the game actually is.[/quote] Undoubtedly true, look around you now. Elemental wasn't an "official" MoM sequel but it was billed

No. Crash bugs, memory leaks, and performance issues are being dealt with swiftly so that's not why I'd say don't buy. The problem is in the gameplay itself. The spells are boring, underpowered, lacking in flavor, and too few. Same with items and champions. There is absolutely no balance and worse combat mechanics themselves are fundamentally broken. In short the game is severely lacking in content and polish. That may be a different story 3-6 months from now but as of today it's simp

[quote who="Zubaz" reply="12" id="2754411"] There is a difference amongst what you *inferred* and what you thought was *implied* and what was stated. [/quote] Obviously, which was half the point of that post... And it's also not about me, rather it's about the perception of most people who followed the game via the press and not Stardocks beta forums. They were led to believe, not by Stardock (lately), that Elemental would be a MoM followup. Those beliefs may not

[quote who="kryo" reply="4" id="2753887"] This is just plain untrue, there was a time when it was intended to be MoM 2. More than that it was announced early on that it was intended to be MoM 2. As I recall, we said right around when we announced the game (if not before) that since we were unable to secure the MoM rights from Atari, we were going to take ideas from all over the genre and make a new game, rather than just trying to make a clone without the MoM title on it. If people

[quote who="awuffleablehedgie" reply="1" id="2753692"]No. It was not. It never was. you were mistaken.[/quote] This is just plain untrue, there was a time when it was intended to be MoM 2. More than that it was announced early on that it was intended to be MoM 2. And right up until release it was being billed in the press as MoM 2 in everything but name. The phrase "spiritual successor to Master of Magic" or the equivalent is in nearly every piece of Elemental coverage. Now ma

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="99" id="2753485"] Stardock's games unit got filled with "group think".[/quote] From everything I've seen, read, and played this pretty much sums it up. I also feel like maybe you guys got so caught up in not making MoM 2 that you made some choices about things based on that and not because they were actually good ideas. (Which is especially a shame since a massive chunk of your audience wants MoM 2) [quote who="Frogboy" reply="110" id=

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="63" id="2753147"] I don't really agree with this. Most mechanics are solid, just need a good balance and scaling pass.[/quote] Sorry but no, some things are just plain broken and need to be redone from the ground up. Combat damage - 1DN is horrible and needs to go away, we need Gaussian distributions at the minimum. Preferably we at least reconsider the whole Attack - Defense = Damage concept with a look towards a ToHit vs. Def

Kuriostone summed it up - MoM I and a lot of other people by the looks of things have been waiting for over a decade for another game that good in this under served genre. This was supposed to be it. It wasn't, hence the reactions.

[quote who="TheProgress" reply="144" id="2749438"]Late game Slowdown!!!! I see you're addressing some of the performance issues - that's good to hear, BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS: https://forums.elementalgame.com/391334/page/15 The terrible performance that many of us are getting has nothing to do with the late-game but happens any time the camera is over a city. People have been saying that their video cards are not being properly used etc. Any word on this issue?[/quote]

[quote who="goodgimp" reply="40" id="2748777"] - Why are you guys still reinventing the wheel for MP? Creating a MP spellbook (no tactical spells, but I thought Brad said you guys had reversed you position on including them in multiplayer?)? Changing tech trees? Guys, just get the base game to an awesome state, and that's what people are going to want to play in MP. [/quote] My guess is because tactical combat in MP will be an option that you can turn

[quote who="Nenjin" reply="189" id="2746534"] After he blamed street vendors for breaking the release date, when SD was allowing the game to anyone who preordered that minute. After he blamed pirates for....something. And after he said the game shouldn't get reviewed until it got a major patch. [/quote] They allowed early downloads specifically because vendors broke the street date... again. SD considered it unfair that someone who took the effort to pr

[quote who="Dethedrus" reply="87" id="2746543"] Buggy? Hell yes. Packed with features? Also an emphatic yes. Lots of variability (magic, races, troops, items, etc.)? Big time. Simplistic but very satisfying tactical combat with lots of special abilities? See the pics above. Unfortunately, Elemental only got the first one "right". Yeah Elemental might be great one day, but MoM was oozing with personality, a huge var

[quote who="Pantasd" reply="74" id="2746127"] elemental has dynasty[/quote] Which is just an alternate way to get additional generic, underpowered, and boring champions. It's also not much of a dynasty, it's not like there's any kind of succession happening. You just get 4 more champions that you can sell for diplomatic purposes but that otherwise you still don't care about.

[quote]Face it, you don't actually want MoM. You want something new. Something better.[/quote] Obviously. Emphasis on the better part. I'm fine with Elemental not copying ever MoM feature identically but I want something that's at least equal or better than a given MoM feature in return. Champions - They're generic, underpowered, and boring with few if any special skills. Clearly a step down from MoM Items - There are a mere handful, you cannot create th

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="44" id="2745150"] remember random huts that give you awesome gear? I got this awesome bow from a hut next to my starting city that made my sovereign totally awesome. [/quote] Not really no... I remember huts that give me ultra crappy random gear that makes my sovereign still totally suck in combat that I could also buy in town... but I'm not really recalling any awesome gear no.

[quote who="KellenDunk" reply="40" id="2745127"] Then why do you make that choice?[/quote] Because it is the logical one. Currently the spellbooks in Elemental are binary propositions. You either take them or you don't, unlike MoM where you could take none, a few, or many books in the various paths. The key to MoMs spellbooks is that you could never get them all, each one you took in one element meant you were giving up a book in another element (or traits). Making the choice of

[quote who="tevans6220" reply="88" id="2744703"]My point was that 1.0 is what shipped to the stores and 1.0 is what should be reviewed. My other point is that the version sold on retail shelves should be the best working version available. If 1.05 was that version then 1.05 should have been the boxed version not 1.0. Since it was 1.0 then 1.0 is what should be reviewed.[/quote] That is simply not how the real world works. All PC games (heck some console games these days...) have a day

Nevermind, post I was replying to was deleted. Feel free to delete this one too.