Stargrazer

Frog, Boogie: Realizing ones mistakes isn't always easy, but it's a very good start to fixing them. Publicly admitting ones mistakes is something worthy of respect. I've been waiting for Elemental for years, and have long felt that it has tremendous potential. It's certainly unfortunate that it got the rocky start that it did, but I still fell that that potential is there, and I'm hopeful that you'll eventually be able to realize that potential. I've bee

[quote who="Verkinix" reply="1" id="2752575"]Those with the loudest voices against its "condition at release" were those who pirated the game and couldn't get the release patch. They got a buggy prerelease version and were upset about it.[/quote] That's an... "interesting" observation. I'm quite certain it is not correct, but "interesting" nonetheless...

[quote quoting="post"] Sorry for the dissertation, but if you are bored while waiting for Elemental to get fixed and want to contemplate the silliness of the human psyche.... I must admit I don't understand all the anger/people saying Stardock should have delayed releasing Elemental until February 2011. It seems to me that EVERYONE is better off with the game released and in players' hands, rather than having Stardock work on it internally for another 6 months

[quote who="Gorstagg" reply="26" id="2739597"]An issue that I find currently odd, and something that I did post about during beta. But as powerful as people say a Channeler is. Their spells often do squat for damage. And yet giving them a bow, so they can do something every round feels bassackwards. There should be a base spell that costs NO mana. That represents a standard ball of damaging magic the caster can use, every round. It's something that was learned in D&D (too

[quote quoting="post"]As suggestions/complaints/bugs are posted, anywhere, they get cobbled into a master feedback spreadsheet with a column called “Count”. The more an Issue is complained or talked about about, the higher it climb on the list, giving a better view on how the entire WORLD feels about the game[/quote] You know, that's a rather dangerous thing to state... :) Anyway, something I'd personally like to see a lot of improvement in is the magic system; for

I think that it's great when devs post frequently on their forums, and believe that this can be of great benefit to their respective communities. Unfortunately, posting a lot (and maybe especially posting ones mind - something that I personally appreciate) can sometimes lead to situations like this. I hope this issue won't deter you from posting on the forums in the future.

[quote who="DarkShrike" reply="200" id="2730283"]Unfortunately this will always be an issue in the wonderful world of PC gaming. There really is no way that a developer, and especially an indie one, can have all the hardware sitting around to test their product on every single possible configuration of an end-user machine.[/quote] Very true. and that is understandable. However, it's not "just" game crashes / hardware issues that have made this release seem somewhat lacki

[quote who="Asmodean_dk" reply="192" id="2729973"] a: Would you rather they released the patch before it was ready?[/quote] Of course not. I much prefer things to be ready when they're released. [quote]Point is...it got out in time![/quote] Point is, it didn't for the ones that had already started their campaigns. [quote]b: Yes, you will get an in-game notification that you should update. At least when you start the game. Not sure if it pops up durin

[quote who="jreynol2" reply="151" id="2728982"]15 min until it is no longer even day-0, and now I need to go to bed. Pretty disappointed that I sat here and waited all day for absolutely nothing. This should have been ready first thing in the morning.[/quote] The really unfortunate thing about the patch not being ready until late in the evening is that it's left plenty of time for people to pick up the game at a store, go home and install the latest patch (which would h

[quote who="Todd Hawks" reply="86" id="2725659"]Just for your information: The patch 1.01 brought 4 new large and 5 new medium maps. bringing the total to 6 and 9, respectively.[/quote] To put things into perspective, this means that the probability of getting at least one repeated map (land mass layout) when playing n games on large maps is: n: prob 2: 16.7% 3: 44.4% 4: 72

[quote who="LDiCesare" reply="74" id="2724415"]If I play 10 elemental games, and if they produce 100 seeds (right now it's less than 10 per map size), the probability of hitting a map twice is around 40%. [/quote] It's even a bit worse than that. The probability of not getting 10 unique maps is around 40% (37.2%). This includes the chance of getting a map thrice, getting two maps twice each, and so on, and so on.

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="11" id="2723149"]Stardock did a good job getting the game basics in good shape. Now they just need to work on the polish Most of the game's issues are with polish (which includes balance).[/quote] I generally prefer it when such polish is done *before* the release of a game, especially since it is likely to affect reviewers, and a good review score can be of great benefit to "smaller" games. However, I appreciate that this can be h

[quote who="kryo" reply="378" id="2717316"] Being bridged or gated to a WAN does not make a LAN any less of one. This is why many of these arguments don't make sense. The overwhelming majority of residential LANs have internet access, but you'd argue that they then are no longer LANs. Which is silly and completely beside the point. Purplepaladin's complaint concerning his LAN-party-in-the-woods, I can understand, but that puts him in a minority (Elemental multiplayers) of a mi

[quote who="Ynglaur" reply="90" id="2691646"]I think it would be nice to have the final results of all trees available even if their victory conditions are disabled (possible exception: Conquest). I remember MOO3 had a set of technologies that, if Tech Victory was on would let you win the game once you had all of them, but which individually gave huge bonuses to certain parts of gameplay. Something similar would be nice. So, creating--or finding--a Forge of the Overlord does

The described behavior sounds perfectly fine, but I do believe that they'd be more *interesting* if they tried to expand at some rate (although slower than the major factions).

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="295" id="2669888"] Do you understand what Imbuing means in terms of game mechanics? It means "Give your Champion 1 essence", which means your champion can now have mana and eventually as he gets more essence through levelups or whatever can actually cast a little bit. There's a huge difference between a Sovereign with 15 essence and a Champion with 1. The mere act of imbuing does not automagically (yes, that's on purpose) make a Champion amazingly powerful.<

[quote quoting="post"]For example: We’re looking at having it be a bigger deal when a City Levels up and giving them points (almost like a character) to put into traits like food production, research production, etc. We can do that because all we have to do is apply something like this: [/quote] How about mutually exclusive buildings instead (or in addition)? For example, when a city reaches level 2, you could get the option to build a Food Production buildin

For comparison, Master of Magic had 213 spells.

[quote quoting="post"]Please also be aware that none of you in the beta will actually ever play Elemental 1.0. You will be playing Elemental 1.01. 1.0 is what we have to ship on DVD and will only be played by people who can’t or won’t update their game. [/quote] Will reviewers get to play 1.0, or will they have to wait for 1.01?

[quote quoting="post"] Initial essence = to unit’s intelligence.[/quote] Does this mean that any later increases to Intelligence will *not* increase your Essence? If so, this would seem to give a strong incentive to "front-load" your Int assignment. i.e. if you were planning to add 4 more points of Int at level ups, you'd benefit (in the long run at least) if you increase your Int by another 4 at the start instead of increasing other attributes, and then you increase tho

Can an imbued Champion use their own Essence to imbue other Champions, or will Imbue Champion be limited to Sovereigns?

[quote]In MoM, spell casting heroes had a ranged magical attack to fall back on once they'd used up their allotted Mana. This allowed them to continue "being magic themed" even after their Mana was gone. Personally, I'd like it if it would be possible to do something similar in Elemental (as opposed to having to fall back on melee weapons all the time, regardless of what "theme" you want your Sovereign to have). Maybe some basic attack spells without any Mana cost could be added?[/quote

Re: MoM Skill One benefit of a "Skill" system is that it allows you to have more control over spellcasting limits. "Skill" limits how much Mana you can expend in one turn, your Mana regeneration limits your long term Mana output (for "large" time frames, MaxMana + RegeneratedMana is dominated by RegeneratedMana), and your maximum Mana limits your short term Mana output (for "small time frames, MaxMana + RegeneratedMana is dominated by MaxMana). This allows you to prevent Sovereigns fr

[quote who="xecran" reply="87" id="2665088"]I kind of like the idea that if you defeat some one will essence then you gain a fraction of their essence, adding it to your own. Not sure it fits with the cannon but I like that concept, reminds me of highlander, I can see that fitting into the game without much of a change. [/quote] Heh. I've been considering posting about that too. Since Essence can be "given", it seems to make some sense if it could potentially be "ta

[quote who="PyroMancer2k" reply="36" id="2664837"]Your mention of INT should effect your ability to cast though made me think of Skill from MoM. How about having INT work like skill did in MoM? For those that don't know you could horde as much mana as you wanted in MoM but your Skill determined how much you could use per turn. So in E:WoM say someone with 10 INT, 15 WIS, and 10 Ess would have 150 Max Mana but could only cast a total number of spells equal to 10 Mana each turn because they onl