I want Stardock to make me a Venti Frappuccino, Raspberry Mocha, no decaf, with whipped cream.

Is that too much to ask?  It is Stardock, isn't it?

Personally, I'd have liked to have had a Stardock employee personally hand deliver my copy of the game to my house.

Sorry, no. I think you are over victimizing Stardock here. The game was bad for one reason IMO: they assumed that the game would be enjoyable automatically so long as certain features were present. Playability of such features was not considered, and, as such, we have a game that is still completely unplayable from a gameplay perspective half a year after release.

The only time we ask for too much is when we request the addition of features which exacerbate the existing issues before said isseus are fixed.

It should be released perfect, without need for patches to fix any kind of bug or to improve the game.

It should be able to pass the Chemistry exams, I mean fuck, it IS Elemental after all.

It was released in what, August? Well, end of August. So it's been almost five months. We're about ten days shy (August 24, 2010 was the release date) of five. And they've already made major strides in the game in both terms of stability and playability. A lot of people are finding the game playable at this point. Maybe a bit bland, maybe needing mods to spice things up, but from a gameplay perspective the game is functioning at least on a basic level. Some people are still having crashes - I was still having crashes even into the last few betas for 1.1, but now I only have one crash every few sessions, which is a lot better than every few turns.

I've played good games that crashed more often, and they were considered playable from a gameplay perspective.

Stardock has promised to make things right and part of that is listening to the players to change and implement new things, and part of that is fixing what they already have. Some people here do ask too much. Demanding a refund after six months is unreasonable from a retail standpoint. Demanding that the game be a 10 by AAA standards when it launched as a 2-6 on most reviews, only five months after release, is also unreasonable. Most people on this forum are reasonable and understanding, which is why they are here. They understand it will take time to get the game to the status of games like GalCiv2.

Brad has already stated that by the third expansion the game will have lost the company money, but healing their wounded fanbase is more important to him and the rest of the company.

Lastly, playability was considered - The problem was that the beta phase was not long enough or in depth enough. If the beta testers, many of whom are still on this forum, saw that things weren't playable or weren't good in their current state, then how can Stardock? They've already said they will revamp their approach to beta testing.

Not sure what else to say, but there's my two cents.

my 2 cents on the matter is that yes the fans demand alot.

BUT put in perspective that everyone wants alot of depth, fun and well nothing short of epic fantasy 4x experience for Elemental and its expansions.

so in accuality its not that we are demanding alot is that we want to have this game benothing short of a classic.

the best part of it all is...  one of the BIGGEST fans of this game is brad who happens to be also the CEO.

hes been hiring alot of talent and really is showing alot of love and commitment to the game.

the BEST thing we can do is what WE are currently doing now... bombard the forums with ideas... that way we can collectively affect the direction this game is going into and elevate it and make it a true classic. imho

No but over-dependency on patches is a bad thing. I know games are more complex than they used to be but seriously, "post-release beta testing" is almost becoming the norm these days.

Oh come on now, everyone knows if you don't call shit rainbows and hand over as much as a company asks for on day 1 without question, then you're not a fan anyway, you're a troll.

I was talking more about fundamental game design ideas.  I've never seen a fan suggest something that a development team hadn't already thought of.

Can you point me to the thread or give some distinct strings so I can search for it? I try to keep up with Dev Journals, but I missed any discussion of doing future betas differently. I definitely felt that there was a major missing final phase that focused on the 'content' (or lack thereof).

Do you have the impression that future betas will give us volunteers more time to muck with a semi-complete game and have effective feedback loops about things like champions feeling too generic and diplomacy being barely there?

From a gameplay perspective, yes. Every aspect of the game is pretty much an exploit that guarantees a win, so there's no actual gameplay. Hence, it is unplayable from a gameplay perspective.

Even if I were to purposefully nerf myself by not using any armor, I could just arrow/blink to instant wins, or I could rush to groups with high attack to instant kill tactical AI opponents, or I could just build basic troops that are actually very crappy so that my score stays high and no one ever attacks me until I autoturn to a magic victory, or I could just rush to magic victory with a large number of arcane labs, or I could get some armor on my champion and rush master quest, or I could get high level spells and just cast them to destroy opponents sovereigns with no effort from strategic view.

There is no gameplay as long as the core mechanics are so easily exploited.

And to clarify a previous post. I was not implying that I'm not satisfied with SD's work so far. Actually, the game has come a lot further than I initially expected in this time frame. All I wanted to point out is that the original problem with Elemental is not that they tried too hard, it's that they added features without making them make sense or work (again from a gameplay perspective).