[quote who="Deleuzian" reply="293" id="2751488"]No, seriously, I wouldn't be posting wisecracks at the moment if I was working for Stardock. In a thread where the CEO posts his everlasting and humble apology to the world.[/quote] Dude, it's just a game. You need a better sense of proportion. By the way, do you even own Elemental, because your comments read a lot like someone who hasn't actually played it.
[quote who="Werewindlefr" reply="16" id="2752152"]Requiring the player to download to patch the game at release to make the game playable is wrong. Not *terribly* wrong, but wrong nonetheless.[/quote] Games that don't require a "day 0" patch are the exception these days, not the rule. Even StarCraft II required a 60MB "day 0" patch before it could be played.
[quote who="b0rsuk" reply="4" id="2752053"]In the past I had to use cracks for games I paid for, including Prey (trivial to emulate, it's f** DooM3 engine)...[/quote] Why would need to crack Prey for Linux when there's a native Linux version available? But I feel your pain. Linux has been my primary OS for the better part of a decade, but I've never been able to nuke my Windows partition because it's the only way to play some games. Wine works fine for a lot of gam
[quote quoting="post"]What do you play when you need a break from Elemental?[/quote] I go to my job or do my homework. [e classic]:P[/e]
Someone posted a quote from the manual, but he posted it in dark gray so it's very hard to read. Here it is in a less obscure color: "Use Localized Data: When enabled this option will have the game use translated text and voiceover data (if available). If disabled, the game will play in English (default)."
Stardock can fix this by changing the text from "Use localized data" to "Degrade game performance". That way people will know it's a good idea to leave it unchecked. [e digicons]:grin:[/e]
[quote who="mastroego" reply="283" id="2750759"]People expected a lot from Elemental...[/quote] Yes, they were expecting GalCiv 2 quality, forgetting that the version of GalCiv 2 currently available only exists because of the years of post-release work that Stardock put into it.
[quote who="Jharii" reply="279" id="2750620"]I never said this.[/quote] Sorry about that. I must have made an errant cut somewhere when I was trying to clean up the text.
There also seems to be a "Let's stick it to Stardock" attitude making the rounds, which is unfortunate since some of these reviewers seem determined not to give Elemental a fair shake.
[quote who="Tormy-" reply="146" id="2750561"]Gameshark - C http://www.gameshark.com/pc/reviews/3607/Elemental-War-of-Magic-Review.htm What's Hot: Original design, clever tech tree What's Not: Terrible artwork, technical problems, underdocumented ......terrible artwork...seriously wtf?[/quote] The phrase "terrible artwork" is generally used to describe any game that isn't a shallow FPS bolted on top of a bleeding edge graphics engine.
[quote who="BoogieBac"]I remember having a list of "wish we could have done THAT" items for GC2, but, despite fearing the worst, the game got great reviews and multiple editors choice awards. I had a similar list with Elemental, but things are turning out QUITE differently Many lessons to be learned, but for now, we work to (hopefully) win back some trust from the gamers that beleive in both us and the game.[/quote] I remember Brad saying that he wou
Hasn't been too easy for me, but it's entirely possible that I just suck at strategy games.
[quote who="theomni" reply="259" id="2749940"]I liked sins of a solar empire, but felt a little cheated when basic things like diplomacy were turned into a paid expansion pack. Never bought any of the expansions since I felt they should have been included in any game billed as a 4x strategy.[/quote] To be fair, Sins wasn't developed by Stardock, they were just the publisher. I'm pretty sure it was the developer's call to make "Entrenchment" and "Diplomacy" paid expansion p
My suggestion from similar thread: Have a resurrection shrine in the capital that will resurrect the sovereign some number of turns after his death. In order to take out a sovereign, you'd need to kill not only him but also destroy the resurrection shrine in his town before he resurrects. During the period when he is dead, his kingdom would suffer some sort of suitable penalty such as low troop morale. Also, if the resurrection shrine is destroyed while the sovereign
Look for more AI improvements in the upcoming 1.1 patch. Brad has also said that he will be taking a sabbatical in the Fall in order to focus his attention on the AI and mod tools.
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was "patched" after the release of The Lord of the Rings in order to make Bilbo's encounter with Gollum consistent with the later story. In the original version, Bilbo beat Gollum in the riddle game, and Gollum, true to his word, gave the Ring to Bilbo as his prize and then led him out of the cave. In the retelling, Bilbo happened upon the Ring by chance, and Gollum tried to kill Bilbo and unwittingly led him out of the cave after Bilb
[quote who="Tryptophan" reply="248" id="2748340"]I can see that my Diablo2 release anecdote was pretty flimsy[/quote] Concerning Diablo 2, I was probably one of the people you saw complaining on the forums because I was one of the many whose CD ROM drive was incompatible with the DRM on the disc, so the game would crash during launch. I had to swap my newer 32x drive for an older 8x one just to play the game, which I thought was an absurd demand for a piece of software. Di
100 hours of play time in a 7-day period? Dude must not have a life.
[quote quoting="post"]This has gone WAY beyond the game; we do have some intentional blindness to the state of the release and wanting the game to be perfect from the outset so badly that reality is denied...[/quote] And that's pretty much where I stopped reading. If you have to front-load your argument by claiming that anybody who disagrees with you is delusional then your argument isn't worth considering.
[quote who="Caduceus06" reply="2" id="2747968"]You're a couple of days behind, here. https://forums.elementalgame.com/392474 https://forums.elementalgame.com/392671[/quote] Yep. He's already apologized and explained himself, and he and his company are committed to improving the game for free until we're satisfied with it. I don't know what else you could reasonably expect. For that matter it's a hell of a lot more than you'd get from
[quote who="cwg009" reply="4" id="2746478"]...real choices would be if for example I research the summoning spellbook then I am locked out of the enchantment spellbook, or if I go far down the War tree that means I can't progress far in the diplomacy tree, etc.[/quote] Making certain research paths and technologies mutually exclusive is an interesting idea.
[quote who="blimey" reply="199" id="2746470"]Why do I have to pay for crap now, in the hopes that it will be buffed out later?[/quote] The game isn't crap now. It could - and will - be better, but it's not crap. Frankly, I'm getting tired of these exaggerations. The way some people talk, Elemental will kill your dog if you install it.
[quote who="tevans6220" reply="195" id="2746417"]Version 1.0 is what ended up on store shelves but he wants reviewers to review the 1.05 version. Why?[/quote] Dude, even StarCraft II had a 60MB day one patch. That's just how things are done in this age of internet connectivity. Get over it.
The OP makes some good points, but the biggest problem is that as long as conquest is a viable path to victory, you can't exactly let your guard down and hope to focus exclusively on one of the other victory paths, not unless the other technology branches allow you to build up some sort of strong defense so you don't always need a large standing army to fight off an invasion. For example, the magic path could give you magical guardians around your cities that you can level up with resea
I love the cloth map. It's so much easier to tell at a glance exactly what's going on in your kingdom. The 3D view is pretty, but the information it conveys is more obscure. [quote quoting="post"]1) If you’re playing a race with a darker color, it can be difficult to differentiate your pieces from the enemy’s pieces. The NPC icons on the map should be changed to look more different than the player(s)[/quote] Use the "sma