Also, Windows UI reskins. For Corporate imaging and stuff like that.
Their Master List of Things to Do for Elemental.
Their Master List of Things to Do for Elemental.
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Elemental: War Of Magic
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Well, they've made the public commitment, and the boost they got from their pre-orders means that the financials are okay. I'm actually enjoying mucking around with it right now, but it's true when they say it's not a focused game yet. More like a sandbox with a bunch of different elements in place.
Hm...I'm not sure I really like their approach at game design: Throw out an unfinished game which is basically a loose collection of different concepts, then let the players do wish-lists and implement those. Does Stardock actually have a vision for this game?
 The player base has good ideas, I'm sure of that, but do they also have a grasp of how their ideas will affect the overall picture, the balance of the game, the grand idea of how the game will play? Is there actually a lead designer at Stardock evaluating all the ideas and carefully integrating them into the big picture? Or is it just hastily implementing everything the players throw at them? I guess I'll have to wait and see. After GalCiv I, I didn't follow what Stardock did so I don't know if their way of game design really works. I hope it will work out well, but I have my doubts somehow.
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
After T-Hawk necro'ed this thread, I reread it...and let's just say that certain comparisons jump immediately to mind.
 Releasing games too early, without proper testing or completed feature sets and balancing, players saying they will check back in a few months once patches and fixes are made....Is there any formal corporate relationship between Firaxis and Stardock?
Civ V style things happen quite a lot. Just looking at a small selection of my games... Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, Medieval Total War 2, Dungeon Keeper 2 and many many more all shipped with balance issues and bugs that were irritating on the level of Civ V. It's practically a standard issue feature of most major game releases that there will be some major issues to patch. It's all stuff that is seriously bad news for the game as played by serious players, but unlikely to be a serious issue for most casual players.
Elemental: War of Magic is apparently something special, with bugs making the game virtually unplayable (and in fact, completely unplayable before the day 0 patch). A Vampire the Masquerade:Bloodlines level of game breaking issues. 
Main AI changes are going into Patch 1.1, so I'd dork around with 1.09 if you've already got the game, see how things are progressing, but wouldn't jump into the wagon until 1.1.
Also, changelog: http://forums.elementalgame.com/398128
I don't have the game, but after reading forums for some weeks I'd recommend staying away from it for some more months... It seems to be much more unbalanced and unfinished than Civ 5, and the AI a lot more stupid and simplistic.
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
I've had a look at their technology tree, and it's quite disappointing.
http://www.elementalgame.com/hiergamenon...s/kingdoms They have quite a few technologies that just seem out of place or lack flavor: Farming Guilds - apparently, to farm requires a guild badge in Elemental's universe. Refined Farming\Production\Mining - general name for technologies that give a bland +10% to respective activity. Economics - not only this name seems rather immersion-breaking for a high fantasy game, but it also leads to Education. Also, it gives "Trade Center" improvement, which is a name that I remember from their sci-fi game Galactic Civilizations, so it doesn't sound medieval at all to me. Education - this leads to housing, which in turn leads to literacy. Buh? Literacy - leads to "Higher Education", which allows building of a university, whereas basic "Education" allowed the building of a school. Now, there's a reason that in Civ Writing unlocks library rather than school - until industrial times, there just was not that much interest by the ruling classes to educate the commoners. So having schools come before universities seems strange. Furthermore, I'm not sure I like the way their tree is constructed - every technology has exactly one prerequisite, so there is no interweaving; it seems more like a shrubbery than an actual tree. It's probably a lot easier to code an AI to understand this, but it does take away more immersion - we can do complex negotiations with other realms without basic literacy or effective bureaucracy? |
