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[Mengy]

I don't think there's a whole lot endearing about the game's jankiness. The game can hold itself together in the early goings as long as you don't go for a min-max sovereign build followed by a rush that the AI is completely incapable of comprehending, let alone responding to, but even if you actively avoid taking advantage of any of the numerous imbalances, oddities, and exploits it all falls apart when you get toward the mid to late stages of the game. Even if you don't go out of your way to take advantage of the game you'll end up doing something that causes it to curl up in the fetal position, whimpering.

Generally speaking, in the late game:

- Your magic becomes largely useless, with the very notable exception of the super cheap teleportation spell that Kingdom factions start with and Empire factions get at level 3. Said spell makes any attempts to garrison cities pointless, as whatever army your sovereign is traveling with is capable of instantly teleporting to them for the piddling cost of 5 mana, with all their movement points intact. You can teleport to a city, eradicate anything that's threatening it, teleport back to your borders, and continue the rampage you were engaging in all in the space of a single turn.

- Units built in your cities are virtually invincible, unless you actively try to gimp them. You wouldn't expect groups of untrained dudes with bludgeons and leather armor to be virtually invincible, but put a few groups of them in a stack and you've built yourself a damn Death Star. Stack them with your sovereign and use the teleport spell to turn them into a Death Star with a hyperdrive.

- Any land not within a faction's borders becomes choked with constantly-respawning glass cannon enemies. And I mean choked. If there's an area of 10 contiguous wilderness squares it's not uncommon for 9 of them to be occupied by some wandering asshole. Don't bother clearing these areas out, either. Even if you have a super-fast, nigh-invulnerable army that can wipe them out in a single turn (which isn't hard to make, by the by) they'll all just respawn the very next turn after you exterminate them. Which makes for a massively efficient experience factory, which just makes things worse.

- Enemy sovereigns either cower within their own borders and wait for you to drop the Sword of Damocles on their heads, or just meander into your borders with a token force and drop it their damn selves. And since their entire faction collapses as soon as they die, that's pretty much handing you a victory. In other words, enemy sovereigns are incapable of properly defending themselves, incapable of mounting a meaningful offense, and if you try to spare them out of pity they usually just commit suicide anyway.

Short version:

In the early stages the game is full of annoying glitches and design decisions, but is mostly playable. In the late stages the game is full of annoying glitches and design decisions, and is completely incoherent. At all stages of the game it crashes constantly.

Very short version:

Elemental is not a game for playing. It is a game for laying down and avoiding.

Wow, that sure is a scathing review. Sounds like I'm better off just sticking with good old Master of Magic for now. I'll have to check Elemental out again in a year or so...

 

[Spl1nter]

Tom Chick pretty much wrote a perfect review for the game. My feelings entirely. Game has the potentially to be easily awesome but is a jumble of features. Im sure teh game will be amazing by February when it should have been released.

http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/08/elemental_the_review.php

Nevertheless Im still having fun in my current game but so much polish is missing which is a shame.

 

[arstal]

http://forums.elementalgame.com/394530

A list of the things that are high priority for them to fix. Note: other things will come later, but I'm sure most if not all of these things will be in 1.10. Stardock does fix stuff fast, but this week they'll be slow due to no Brad.

Fixes will come in piecemeal most likely, expect patches before 1.10.

 

[Spl1nter]

A list of the things that are high priority for them to fix. Note: other things will come later, but I'm sure most if not all of these things will be in 1.10. Stardock does fix stuff fast, but this week they'll be slow due to no Brad.

There will probably be a patch this week but no AI improvements as Brad isnt in the office.

 

[arstal]

http://forums.elementalgame.com/394855/page/2/#2753014

Harsh.

That said, Stardock earned one free pass from me, and this was it.

 

[ixix]

Well that's certainly quite candid. I harbor doubts about the prospects of making the game particularly worth playing in any reasonable time span, but still. Brownie points.

 

[ElectricThunder]

Stop Stop Stop. And I'm not just saying that because it takes like half a minute to load up a page from here.

There is a phrase they use in the movie industry "Kill your darlings".

The person green lighting a production should NEVER EVER be the one working on said production. Writing AI on GalCiv or helping design the game mechanics on Sins of a Solar Empire kept me at a reasonable distance from the actual GAME.

The problem with Elemental was that I am in love with it. To me, it's not just a game. It's a whole world that we can expand and build on. During the months of July and August, when I was working on the game non-stop, I literally had a hard time distinguishing the difference between the GAME, the MODS and the future. It all merged into one fuzzy centrality.

Stardock will be working on Elemental for years to come. Literally. Let me be specific: Stardock will NOT release a new game next year. It'll all be Elemental related. Releasing it in August wasn't a financial decision. Hell, Stardock's games aren't funded by PC game revenue. I wanted you guys to get the game ASAP.

I think most people would agree that Elemental has tremendous potential. The reason it was released when it was was because we thought it had reached that level ready to be shipped. When you're living, breathing and eating something 24/7, your perspective changes.

From a personal pride point of view, it would be much easier to say "Whohaah, my jet fuel requires Elemental to ship in August!". To give you guys an idea of how certain I was that the game was ready for everyone to ship, I didn't just give copies to reviewers, I sent copies to my friends who used to be reviewers (long story but the gaming media has changed a lot in the past 18 months) because I was dying for them to see this masterpiece.

Tom Francis's debiliating PC Gamer preview only was possible was because I personally compiled a version for him (of v1.0) for him to see because the v1.0 version doesn't work outside North America (region checking). In other words, that negative PC Gamer UK preview was only possible because I was so confident in Elemental's readiness that I bypassed Stardock's PR people to get a friend of mine in Europe a copy.

I don't think there should be much disagreement that Stardock absolutely blew it with the launch. Holy cow that should be obvious by now. In my mind, anything less than "game of the year" (in a year with Starcraft 2 and Civ V in it) means we totally screwed up.

The real question, and the question I think every single person who shelled out $50+ for this game should ask is this: What is Stardock going to do to make me whole?

And the answer, I hope, is in the coming months because, like I said, most of Stardock's revenue doesn't come from making PC games.

Having my idiocy shown on a global stage is humbling but probably very constructive for PC gamers. I think most people would agree that Elemental is a fantastic game -- once you get past the idiotic UI decisions, balance, etc.

We are very fortunate to be in a position to make the situation right. We're our own publisher. We don't have the same financial constraints as other companies so we can spend months or even years if necessary to do right by you guys.

Hopefully, this message will make it up to the forums, (because it was long) but if it does, please take it as it is meant. I failed you. I failed you because I love what we're doing and out of sheer hubris -- that the basic law of programmer != guy who decides if it is done somehow didn't apply to me. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Elemental is getting pasted in reviews and deserves that pasting. I'm glad many people are having fun but our eyes have been opened. Like I said before, I'll be writing a lot more about this when I get back to an Internet connection that measures bandwidth with an M instead of a K.

Later post in the thread digs it even deeper! Wow. Bit of an eyebrow raise at that "GotY aspiration" bit though---somehow that just strikes me as rather off.

 

[Spl1nter]

Later post in the thread digs it even deeper! Wow. Bit of an eyebrow raise at that "GotY aspiration" bit though---somehow that just strikes me as rather off.

And it continues. Also GOTY aspiration doesn't surprise me. GC2 Ultimate is simply one of the best 4X games ever. Personally I have it above CIV4.

Obviously, if you don't like the game at its core, you probably won't ever like it. My suggestion would be to read carefully the reviews of Tom Chick, Troy, and even Tom Francis's to get an idea of the level of fail here.

When I worked with Tom Chick on GalCiv II, he could give me feedback and it was to me. If he didn't like something it was no skin off my back because I wasn't coding it. I would just pass it on and make adjustments. But on Elemental, because I was personally coding (i.e. personally spending 2am mornings coding) a "suggestion" carried a different emotional context.

It doesn't change the fact that I was an idiot or whether Stardock's games unit got filled with "group think". The issue is the *result*. At the end of the day, gamers shouldn't care WHY a launch failed. But rather what the heck the company that just charged you $50 for said game is gonna do about it.

 

[arstal]

Well that's certainly quite candid. I harbor doubts about the prospects of making the game particularly worth playing in any reasonable time span, but still. Brownie points.

It may not be in a reasonable timespan, but they will get right. If they don't, I'll be playing Duke Nukem Forever.

GalCiv 2 Twilight was a near classic. It was right on that border between great game and classic to me- only a few niggling things kept it short.

This is why I am willing to be patient as long as I need to be- it's powered by faith and fanboyism, but they've earned it from me. I just wish others felt the same way, but most have no reason to.

 

[Johann]

It may not be in a reasonable timespan, but they will get right. If they don't, I'll be playing Duke Nukem Forever.

GalCiv 2 Twilight was a near classic. It was right on that border between great game and classic to me- only a few niggling things kept it short.

This is why I am willing to be patient as long as I need to be- it's powered by faith and fanboyism, but they've earned it from me. I just wish others felt the same way, but most have no reason to.

The funny thing is that Brad wanted Twilight to come out in 2007. This way Stardock could be known to have released two high quality expansions in one year. He was talked out of it by posters since they wanted him to iron out all the issues before its release.

 

[arstal]

The funny thing is that Brad wanted Twilight to come out in 2007. This way Stardock could be known to have released two high quality expansions in one year. He was talked out of it by posters since they wanted him to iron out all the issues before its release.

I never considered DA all that great to be honest. Twilight more then made up for it though.

BTW 1.07 patch is out now. Bunch of bugfixes, a few gameplay buffs also.

 

[Spl1nter]

I never considered DA all that great to be honest. Twilight more then made up for it though.

BTW 1.07 patch is out now. Bunch of bugfixes, a few gameplay buffs also.

Link to the patch notes for anyone interested

1.07 Notes

 

[arstal]

Played around with this patch this morning.

It seems like a good bit of the technical problems the game had, have been eliminated. I didn't get into the game long enough to see if that continued into the late game.

There are still a few performance bugs that have been spotted, but none of it seems critical right now.

Gameplay-wise, just a few fixes of the worst things- but gameplay's gonna get revamped totally I think, so waiting for that to start next week.

 

[Mengy]

Man, I so wanted this game to be great. I really wanted a modern version of Master of Magic. After reading the reviews however I am going to pass on it for now, Starcraft 2 is keeping me more than busy for gaming.

However, it is very nice to hear Brad admit his mistakes like that. I'll admit, that impressed me. I'm going to follow this game closely for the next year or so, in hopes that it does one day become a game worth buying. If it gets there, I'll buy it for sure, because I do like what I see so far.

 

[eznark]

Man, alt+tab bugs still not fixed. That's a shame. It's the one thing keeping me from really digging into the game. Just played like 90 minutes of my kingdom and had it crash when I at'd to check my email. Hope it autosaved!

 

[BobsRevenge]

http://forums.elementalgame.com/394855/page/2/#2753014

Harsh.

That said, Stardock earned one free pass from me, and this was it.

I can respect the dude for coming out and saying that.

 

[JayDubya]

It really sounds like this one will get a lot of polish to bring it up to snuff; sucks that it didn't happen before the game was actually ready to launch... so I guess I'll be waiting and watching and hoping.

Master of Magic was one of my first PC titles and I wanted this so badly to rekindle that level of awesome.

 

[eznark]

For those who want to hear more, Brad Wardell will be on the Three Moves Ahead podcast next week (releases around Tues/Wed) and supposedly Tom and Bruce will be making their long awaited return to the show as well.

Since they're all friends on one level or another, it should be a pretty excellent and frank discussion on the production and release process. From all accounts, it sounds like Wardell was just blind to the games short comings at 1.0 because he was so involved and enamored with the project.

 

[bigmit3737]

Is the demo still being released in September?

 

[biocat]

It's sad. I was looking forward to elemental and was so close to pre-ordering.
With the ways things are going I"ll probably be playing this in a year when it's on sale for $10.

 

[arstal]

It's sad. I was looking forward to elemental and was so close to pre-ordering.
With the ways things are going I"ll probably be playing this in a year when it's on sale for $10.

Stardock games don't usually drop in price much. EWOM I think they'll do a price drop once the community considers it great though.

 

[Acosta]

Brad added this to the "mea culpa", it´s a bit heartbreaking.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/394855/page/4/#2753375

I stand for what I said, I like the game, even if it has some BIG problems in key areas (IA and performance being the most annoying). Perhaps I'm under the delusion of someone that a)has MoM among his favourite games, ever b) wasn't able to get Shadow Magic, which everyone pretty much agrees is the only game that has matched and even surpassed MoM c) loves GalCiv 2. Elemental has been the only game since MoM that has given to me that mix of civ+magic+tactical battles in sandbox mode, something I never found in AoW II, Heroes of M&M or Disciples, so I am enjoying the game, and I think it will be something special in some months.

Wishful thinking? maybe, but I feel better thinking that way.

 

[eznark]

I don't think it's wishful thinking. I'm still enjoying the game. So are a handful of reviewers (Chick, Zacny) and a number of folks on the webs.

 

[ghst]

regardless of my feelings towards his politics or design choices, a statement like that from a ceo takes some sand.

 

[eznark]

regardless of my feelings towards his politics or design choices, a statement like that from a ceo takes some sand.

if only he swung the other way he could have blamed the shitty release on Bush.

 

[ruuk]

I have no way to confirm this is true, but Shacknews is reporting Stardock layoffs related to the failed launch of this game.

I feel bad for the guys and gals at Stardock who have been working round the clock since the game's release.

Story here

 

[Aselith]

I have no way to confirm this is true, but Shacknews is reporting Stardock layoffs related to the failed launch of this game.

I feel bad for the guys and gals at Stardock who have been working round the clock since the game's release.

Story here

I doubt that is accurate.

Edit: And yet I was wrong.

 

[eznark]

I have no way to confirm this is true, but Shacknews is reporting Stardock layoffs related to the failed launch of this game.

I feel bad for the guys and gals at Stardock who have been working round the clock since the game's release.

Story here

He did say there would be serious repercussions a couple days ago. Seemed obvious heads would roll.

 

[arstal]

I believe this is Stardock's planned 2nd studio that was working on a PC/360 RPG.


Edit: looks like more then that.

This shakes my confidence, but maybe a leaner Stardock will get it done.

It sucks for the employees involved- especially if its not their fault.

I do think this means that in 2012-2013, we're getting GC3 next.

 

[tehbear]

I got so little sleep when I found out about MoM. The "Just Another Turn" sometimes went on for 8 hours!

Even though I hated the art style in Elemental, I was still pretty hyped since the AoW series never quite scratched that MoM itch for me. Reading stuff like this... man it hurts. How this could have been a surprise to them is shocking. I will definitely keep my eyes on this though. I can't wait until it reaches its potential.

 

[blitz64]

82,000 copies sold in 2 week. That's faster than Demigod or SoaE.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/395485

 

[graywolf323]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/elementalwarofmagic/review.html

GameSpot came out and slammed it with a 4.0 :-(

 

[arstal]

The 4.0 is harsh. A 6.0 would have been fair.

The 82k sales make me think SD will do fine in the long-term. GCII made more profit then Elemental cost to make. The important thing for SD is to try and minimize their long-term reputation hit.

 

[Decado]

82,000 copies sold in 2 week. That's faster than Demigod or SoaE.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/395485

The only good things about that are that it shows there is demand for a TBS game with tactical elements and that they may decide it is worth patching/modding the game to bring it up to a high level.

That said, I'm not touching it until they do (since I'm not sure it is even possible).

 

[Zzoram]

The 4.0 is harsh. A 6.0 would have been fair.

The 82k sales make me think SD will do fine in the long-term. GCII made more profit then Elemental cost to make. The important thing for SD is to try and minimize their long-term reputation hit.

4.0 sounds right. They flaunted the gamer's bill of rights, then released an unfinished buggy mess and are asking for people to wait weeks/months for them to maybe finish the released game.

 

[Alcool313]

Man I really hope that all this bad press doesn't demoralize them to the point that they abandon the game. I think it has great potential if the glaring errors are fixed. Too bad the same can't be said for the ugly art direction.

 

[arstal]

Man I really hope that all this bad press doesn't demoralize them to the point that they abandon the game. I think it has great potential if the glaring errors are fixed. Too bad the same can't be said for the ugly art direction.

Stardock has never abandoned a game before. I'll be surprised if they do it now- since it would offend their core customers, which is what they have left for Elemental.

 

[eznark]

Three Moves Ahead with Brad Wardell.

 

[arstal]

Some further info.

Looking like the deadline to get free expansions is going to be the 1.1 patch, which looks like early October. The "1st XP" will be free to everyone, the "2nd XP" will require getting the game by then.

(I wouldn't be shocked if they do a 3rd XP, especially if the 2nd XP sells decently)

There will be a patch this week, that may or may not include MP (1.08 patch)

 

[Spl1nter]

1.08 patch has been released and here are the patch notes

http://forums.elementalgame.com/396709

---------------------------------------------------
----------- Elemental v1.08b Change Log -----------
---------------------------------------------------

We are on the process of putting up v1.08 of Elemental: War of Magic.

Here’s a change log over v1.07:

+ LOD optimizations across improvements and tile designs
+ Continued memory optimization
+ AI handles its sovereign more intelligently
+ AI more effective at going after targets of opportunity
+ AI sovereign is more careful about going into enemy territory
+ AI has new APIs for determining whether there are targets of opportunity in the area
+ Balance pass on resource distribution
+ Base tech cost changed from 4 to 5
+ Merchants/Money Changers now require 1 food to construct
+ Study/Archivist now require 1 gildar per turn to maintain
+ Gildar deposit now seeded near starting location
+ Tracker talent cost changed from 15 to 10
+ Organized talent cost changed from 10 to 20
+ Combat Rating calculation altered in an attempt to be a more accurate gauge of lethalness
+ Fewer resources spawned per 1000 tiles.
+ Fewer minor factions spawned.
+ Added scalars to attack and defence for units who are in home territory or foreign territory, modifiable in ElementalDefs.xml
+ Territory scalars now work as Empire v Fallen (e.g. Kingdom guy on Fallen territory gets penalty, etc).
+ Updated formula for gildar given when killing a given unit
+ Child essence is no longer modified by spawn rating, but is instead a value between 50% and 100% of the more powerful parent's essence.
+ Updated TerrainTypes.xml to make Forests and Swamps take 2 moves
+ Changing the “IncreaseMorale” modifier attribute to “AdjustMorale. It’s more clear for the modders.
-Revamp of the way offensive spells hit/miss and deal their damage
+HIT/MISS is deteremined by an attacker roll (minDamage – maxDamage) and by the defender roll (0-DEF)
+Values can now be specified as a MinValue and a MaxValue rather than just a Value (support for constant value spells is still supported)
+If a MinValue and a MaxValue is specified, the Value is defined by a rand roll between the two numbers based on the modifiers internal rand roll.
+Updated descriptions for all core spellbook spells to show bonus damage from INT and bonus damage from shards in the spell description.
+The SpellbookWnd has been updated to properly display the damage range if there is one, and the constant damage if there isn’t one.
+All core spells that were using stats to calculate the value but didn’t have a ValueOwner specified have been fixed.
+The elemental shards unit stats now default to 0 instead of 1. The calculations in the existing spells have been redone to reflect this.
+ Fixed BURNING BLADE spell to appropriately increase attack.
+ Fixed SHIELD OF FIRE spell to appropriately increase defense.
+ Fixed CRUSH SPIRIT spell to appropriately decrease morale.
+ Fixed BRAVERY spell to appropriately increase morale.
+ Fixed DRAIN LIFE spell to appropriately transfer HP from target to caster.
+ Changed the display code for the main UI bar to round attack and defense rather than truncate.
+ Hooked up the CTRL+ARROW and SHIFT-ARROW camera rotation and movement hotkeys to tactical.
+ Added save game descriptions
+ Fixed bug where dialogs from triggers in the campaign (like moving beyond where you should build a city) would pop up many times when a unit moved into that tile.
+ Fixed AI bug where it was doing deficit spending and creating units still
+ Removed the max spell points entry from the affected stats in the level up wnd, since it isn't affected by any unit stats anymore
+ Fixed bug where non-aggression pact wasn't being checked for when left-clicking on a unit in attack mode
+ Fixed modifier in Refined_Economics_Amarian_MP to modify A_Gold player ability instead of A_Wealth (which doesn't exist)
+ Fixed golem animation pack (commented out an animation that was missing and causing t-poses)
+ Fixed crash when making a mountain in map editor
+ Fixed trading your spouse (if she was a recruited NPC) in the regular unit trade
+ Perceived value stuff gets hidden when arranging marriages, instead of showing whatever was selected last
+ Entries for kids when arranging marriages now use a male and female icon to denote boy and girl, instead of the words in parentheses after the name
+ Fixed "..." from string overflowing for the divider title when trading or arranging a marriage
+ Fixed the divider title not ever changing from "And" once the arrange marriage screen was shown
+ Fixed display of tooltip text and color text on Customize Faction window
+ Tweaked SetToolTip to calculate the necessary size of the window more accurately, to fix bug where tooltips were sometimes being truncated
+ Fixed bug where clicking a new destination while the unit was moving would cause the unit to get a free move
+ You can no longer set a units destination while it is moving
+ Fixed Refined Housing and Refined Economics techs (and their fallen equivalents) so that they correctly provide the bonus they say they do
+ When a unit inside a city or an army is selected and asked to cast a spell, that is the unit that is used for spellcasting now, instead of having it just fail (in a city) or try to cast the spell from the leader of the army
+ Fixed bug where summoning a unit while in a city would cause that unit to be summoned in an army with you within that city (causing weird behavior), now just stations the unit in the city with you
+ Fixed bug where raise land spell would not work on all land category terrain types, like swamp or rugged terrain. Now, if a land tile is not hills, it raises that land to hills, instead of checking for only some terrain types
+ Fixed a bug where, in the faction editor, you could select ability bonus options for free by selecting and deselecting them, and then spinning the race spinner, caused by deselection not updating the faction config correctly
+ Fixed units that finished training on the same turn as an autosave not being there when the autosave was loaded
+ Fixed players not being able to select their city level up bonuses or tech breakthroughs on loading an autosave if they were earned that turn, by having the local player mark themselves as needing to get user input for these things instead of unhiding the windows to allow the choice right away during CWorld::EndTurn, and not letting the user choose until after the next turn starts and the autosave has been made. If one of thses autosaves is loaded, the local player will be allowed to choose their tech breakthroughs and city bonuses once the map is unhidden. This keeps us from having to delay an autosave and the start of the next turn by waiting for the user to choose their bonuses, instead making that choice part of the start turn logic after the autosave has been made and saving the mark saying the player will get to choose at the start of the next turn.
+ Fixed treaty turn counts not matching if an autosave was loaded
+ Based on confusion in the forums, removed ability to automatically unlock a spell in the learning queue if it makes it to the front of the queue when the player has enough research to buy it, so that users rearranging their spell learning queue don't have their spell points silently taken away while shuffling spells around, if they didn't intend to learn that spell next
+ Now it always takes at least one turn to learn any spell
+ Fixed bug where tile highlights in tactical battle would disappear after an ALT+TAB
+ Fixed bug where trees would not look correct in all cases after loading a gamesave.
+ Fixed an issue that was allowing counter attacks against units with abilities of type DoesNotProvokeCounterattacks.
+Fixed an issue that was causing modifiers applied in tactical battles to persist after the battle.
- This fixes the bug that causes XP and Gildar rewards after battles to be negatively skewed if the enemy unit combat rating was lowered due to debuffs.
+Fixed an issue with skipping turns in tactical battles that would cause a stuck turn if done when the unit being skipped was in motion. - Pressing spacebar now sets a tactical units moves to zero AND cancels their destination.

For those who want to play v1.08 in multiplayer mode, you will need to set Impulse to show Pre-release versions:

image

We designated multiplayer as “beta” because we disabled playing against AI until next week. I had written a lot of AI code this week that is in the single player version but had not been adequately tested for MP. We didn’t want to give players the impression that was considered the feature set in multiplayer as being all that’s coming.

Next week we anticipate releasing v1.09 which will continue to address issues that were not found in the initial release, improve computer AI further and provide it and other new MP features. After that, we will begin focusing on v1.1 which will be the first post-release update that is designed specifically to extending game play.

Anyone who has performance or technical (stability) problems with this build please make sure you you let us know. At this stage, the technical issues that were present at launch should be fully addressed. If this isn’t the case for you, let us know as much as you can about your system as we will personalize our efforts as much as possible.

We are anxious to move forward to begin our traditional policy of extending the game to suit the desires of the gaming community.

Other notes:

1. We have implemented an option for quick moves in tactical battles but it was not checked-in in time for this build.
2. We intend to provide an option for the amount of gildar that will be present in the world (both in terms of loot and the amount of gold that gold deposits provide). We dramatically reduced the amount of loot that monsters provide because it was not intended for players to run their economy "harvesting" wolves and other creatures but rather supplement. We recognize that others enjoy this and will address this as an option in future versions.

Version 1.08 is now available

Known issues:

1. If you are loading a saved game created with a previous version, there may be some anomalous behaviors in tactical battles with direct damage magical spells (we may release an update to address this).
2. Some outlaw adventurers are appearing as if they are recruitable, this is a UI issue that will be addresed in the next update.

 

[Aselith]

Multiplayer in! BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!

 

[Fredescu]

Multiplayer in beta!

Fixed. Considering the quality of the finished product, I'm not sure what to expect out of a beta. Make sure you've backed up all of your data and that you're not living on a fault line.

 

[eznark]

Fixed. Considering the quality of the finished product, I'm not sure what to expect out of a beta. Make sure you've backed up all of your data and that you're not living on a fault line.

I don't think anyone ever claimed the product was finished, even when they thought it was launching well.

 

[Fredescu]

Regardless of plans for future patches, presumably someone internal decided what ended up as 1.0 was a gold build?

 

[Aselith]

Regardless of plans for future patches, presumably someone internal decided what ended up as 1.0 was a gold build?

Brad Wardell has said that he decided to send it out because he believed it was in good condition. It was bad decision, he's said all over the place that it was a bad decision and promised to correct the issues. It's been discussed a lot including in this thread. Why did you even bring that up?

I say multiplayer is up and immediately it's a month ago? Did you fall into a timewarp or something?

 

[Fredescu]

Why did you even bring that up?

I apologise if my attempt at humour offended.

I say multiplayer is up and immediately it's a month ago?

Eh? It's still in beta right?

 

[Aselith]

Fixed is a joke. Adding some stuff about backing up your data and whatnot means you are serious and want to let people know that this shit be fucked up. Learn how to joke. I agree though it'll probably be rough at first like any new game or mode.

What I meant by a month ago is that the stuff about the launch was discussed at launch. Why are you bringing it up with regard to multiplayer being added?


Edit: Wait, there may be an issue with terminology here. Is:

Regardless of plans for future patches, presumably someone internal decided what ended up as 1.0 was a gold build?

refering to the multiplayer release candidate as gold? Something "going gold" means that a copy has been made to send to the printer so that the game can be manufactured. It refers to the launch of a retail product not a patch release.

Did you really mean to refer to the multiplayer patch (1.08)?

 

[Fredescu]

Fixed is a joke. Adding some stuff about backing up your data and whatnot means you are serious and want to let people know that this shit be fucked up. Learn how to joke.

"Fixed" is the only part that wasn't a joke. The fault line part was meant to sell the second sentence as a joke. I don't seriously think that playing Elemental multiplayer beta is going to cause seismic disruptions and swallow you and your pc into a hole in the ground. No doubt my delivery was flawed.

What I meant by a month ago is that the stuff about the launch was discussed at launch. Why are you bringing it up with regard to multiplayer being added?

They've specifically said that while multiplayer is in, it's in beta.

"For those who want to play v1.08 in multiplayer mode, you will need to set Impulse to show Pre-release versions:

We designated multiplayer as “beta” because we disabled playing against AI until next week. I had written a lot of AI code this week that is in the single player version but had not been adequately tested for MP. We didn’t want to give players the impression that was considered the feature set in multiplayer as being all that’s coming."

Yes, they have a specific reason for keeping it in beta, but betas are often buggy by nature. Perhaps this one isn't. That's not the point. All I meant was that if you use the Elemental release as their standard for a release build, their standard for a beta must by definition be much lower, and therefore it must be catastrophically bad. Bad enough to literally cause a physical catastrophe. I don't seriously think that, I just saw it as the opening for a joke, which turned out to be a bad one. So I was actually serious in my apology. I'm not trying to tear open old wounds. I was looking forward to this one pre release too.

Edit:

refering to the multiplayer release candidate as gold? Something "going gold" means that a copy has been made to send to the printer so that the game can be manufactured. It refers to the launch of a retail product not a patch release.

I'm absolutely not referring to the patch release. Not sure why you think that. Hopefully what I've just posted clears that up. I don't really want to spend any more time explaining a shitty off the cuff joke.

 

[Aselith]

Alright. I'll accept that was a joke. Not sure what the punchline was but we can't all be Seinfeld.

I'm absolutely not referring to the patch release. Not sure why you think that. Hopefully what I've just posted clears that up. I don't really want to spend any more time explaining a shitty off the cuff joke.

As for this part, the reason I asked that is because I responded to you based on the belief that you were talking about the game launch and then you come back at me with. " Hey, man, the multiplayer just launched!" then I respond based on the belief you were talking about the multiplayer and you're saying "of course I wasn't talking about the multiplayer." Do you have memory problems like that dude in Momento or something?

 

[arstal]

Elemental patched yesterday, hotfixed today.

MP is enabled in the beta patch.

BTW Stardock claims their betas are really alphas.