How long until Elemental is "finished"

from Elemental Forums

Hello,

 

Please stay with me, this isn't meant to be a negative post... my question is:

 

when do you think Elemental will be "finished" and worth playing?

 

It seems clear that the release version 1.0 is not going to live up to expectations. Sure, it might be good, but it is clearly going to be a better, more rounded, balanced, interesting, deep game 6 months after release. I'm sure I read somewhat that the tactical combat system will be heavily overhauled in the first major patch, around 120 days after release (?). Similarly, with all the mod tools, I imagine the magic system and quests will become much more varied over time.

 

So, given i have very little free time (I'm still to start Fable2, Fallout3, only scratched the surface of FallfromHeaven2, etc etc etc) its clearly not worth playing Elemental in August. I'd be better off buying Starcraft2, or finishing a game I already own. :p

 

Also, if the game is going to be heavily dependant on user created content, will there be ways in which I can get the good, interesting, balanced quests, and avoid the crappy ones. Is somebody at startdock going to be collecting the good user created content and bundling some of it into the "definitive version"

 

I guess part of the reason for my mindset is that I bought CivIV on release, and played the hell out of it. I've gone back to it several times over the years, and the current Beyond The Sword patch gives a hugely better than than vanilla CivIV 1.0. But, guess which version of the CivIV I played the most... the early unbalanced ones.

 

Conversely, with GalCiv2, I was late to the party. Very late. I bought the game + expansions a couple of years back, and thought it was great. But, I'm glad I didn't "waste" much time playing the vanilla game, as the expansions added a lot and as the game was mature, it was pretty balanced.

 

I expect that the game will improve rapidly during the first 6 months... (balance patches, more content, etc) then things will level off as focus is switched to the expansion. Sound about right?

 

 

elemental
44,039 views 67 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Also, if the game is going to be heavily dependant on user created content, will there be ways in which I can get the good, interesting, balanced quests, and avoid the crappy ones. Is somebody at startdock going to be collecting the good user created content and bundling some of it into the "definitive version"

The mods will be heavily moderated, but they haven't said if it will be by SD folks or community volunteers helping them.

To answer your main question, though, it's pretty hard to tell when Elemental will be "finished". There are 2 expansion packs planned for it already (one having to do at least in part with item creation/enchantment, and the other with seas), so technically it won't be "finished" at least until those two come out, officially. The first is due in February.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

i think to be finished it need to have a good system going on

 

ie a magic system a combat system, quest system etc

 

that doesnt imply to have good magic or quests in the actual release game but the system need to be there

 

ofc not perfect, nothing is perfect, surely not at release

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Annatar11, reply 1

Also, if the game is going to be heavily dependant on user created content, will there be ways in which I can get the good, interesting, balanced quests, and avoid the crappy ones. Is somebody at startdock going to be collecting the good user created content and bundling some of it into the "definitive version"
The mods will be heavily moderated, but they haven't said if it will be by SD folks or community volunteers helping them.

To answer your main question, though, it's pretty hard to tell when Elemental will be "finished". There are 2 expansion packs planned for it already (one having to do at least in part with item creation/enchantment, and the other with seas), so technically it won't be "finished" at least until those two come out, officially. The first is due in February.

Gal civ 2 was never finished till the last X pack came out same for Sins of a solar empire.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Elemental will never be finished.

As for when it'll be worth playing, I would say August 24th. :)

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

what timezone for the 24th? starcraft 2 came out early over here.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 4
Elemental will never be finished.

As for when it'll be worth playing, I would say August 24th.
Elemental 2, allowing you to import everything from Elemental since...

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Well don't worry too much about Fable 2 taking up your time, you'll get through it in about 5 hours. =P

 

terrible game. Even Peter himself was recently quoted that he thought it was actually crap.

 

Elemental is coming along nicely. It's still a beta and we still have a month to go. It was 100 times worse than it is now a month ago, alot can change.

 

Well, you could play spamcraft 2 while you wait for sure. Ill pass thanks

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

its called zergcraft 2 since you just rush with zerglings to win most of the time.

ewww Fable one and two can go to hell... Black And White 2 was also a big fail.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Ravenstrike, reply 7
Well don't worry too much about Fable 2 taking up your time, you'll get through it in about 5 hours. =P

 

terrible game. Even Peter himself was recently quoted that he thought it was actually crap.

 

Elemental is coming along nicely. It's still a beta and we still have a month to go. It was 100 times worse than it is now a month ago, alot can change.

 

Well, you could play spamcraft 2 while you wait for sure. Ill pass thanks

I liked Fable 2. :)

And I love Starcraft 2. 

My main gripe about Elemental has been users who think they're playing some demo version rather than a beta.

Hopefully some people will be able to dig into the modding and show how easy it is to make spells and quests so people would quit sweating that sort of thing. We try to take care of the hard things first and the easier things later.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 9

Quoting Ravenstrike, reply 7Well don't worry too much about Fable 2 taking up your time, you'll get through it in about 5 hours. =P

 

terrible game. Even Peter himself was recently quoted that he thought it was actually crap.

 

Elemental is coming along nicely. It's still a beta and we still have a month to go. It was 100 times worse than it is now a month ago, alot can change.

 

Well, you could play spamcraft 2 while you wait for sure. Ill pass thanks

I liked Fable 2.

And I love Starcraft 2. 

My main gripe about Elemental has been users who think they're playing some demo version rather than a beta.

Hopefully some people will be able to dig into the modding and show how easy it is to make spells and quests so people would quit sweating that sort of thing. We try to take care of the hard things first and the easier things later.

 

I blame the big publishers who like to call their demo marketing schemes "betas". It has created a huge crowd of gamers who have no idea what beta really means.

 

You guys will rock it out before the 24th, and continue to make it even better onwards. I'm amazed at how much you were able to get done just between beta3c and beta4!

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Elemental will be a fun game to play on august 24.. sure it will be diffrent in 30 days (after first patch) and again in 60 days(2nd patch) .. add on all the potential of all the mods and expansions to come.. well it will be finished when I stop playing ... at least for me .. i don think that's going to happen any time soon.. sure I may take a break while i play a different game that's released or wait for a cool mod / expansion to be finished. but i will be back..

to say

It seems clear that the release version 1.0 is not going to live up to expectations
is a disservice to the dev staff.. the game may not be all that some  hoped it would be but that does not mean it wont be fun or a good game.. this is in part the fault of our lofty expectations not the efforts of the team.. will it be a different game in 6 months? very likely but thats the nature of this type of game... If you want to wait until some future date when you expect it will be better, by all means.. however many of us have been having fun with just the brief glimpses of what the day 0 game will be like..

oh an btw  fail here

this isn't meant to be a negative post.
the post is negative albeit cleverly worded..

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Hopefully some people will be able to dig into the modding and show how easy it is to make spells and quests so people would quit sweating that sort of thing. We try to take care of the hard things first and the easier things later.

If it wasn't for a job during the day, I'd have a couple quests out already. Had some time last night to get about half way done with a basic one (mostly creating the tiles and setting them up to be used in the quest XML, which is about the only thing left to do).

At the moment I'd say the process is pretty intuitive for anyone who isn't afraid of hand-editing files. As a Sins modder, it's pretty familiar ground (though Sins used plain text instead of XMLs), so I just dove right in. The quest I'm doing now is a basic 1-step, but I've got some better ones lined up once I get comfier with the system. Hoping to have a couple done over the weekend!

Been excited about quest modding since the beginning :)

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

And I love Starcraft 2.

love it to, love elemental more though. been waiting for elemental longer then starcraft 2.

Hopefully some people will be able to dig into the modding and show how easy it is to make spells and quests so people would quit sweating that sort of thing. We try to take care of the hard things first and the easier things later.

need the rest of the tools as well as all the monsters still missing the titen -_-

super demon "elemental lord" is rather cool took ages to find that model... could really do with a lot more cloths and armor to play/mod with.     :erk:

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

<double post> sorry O:)

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 9

Quoting Ravenstrike, reply 7Well don't worry too much about Fable 2 taking up your time, you'll get through it in about 5 hours. =P

 

terrible game. Even Peter himself was recently quoted that he thought it was actually crap.

 

Elemental is coming along nicely. It's still a beta and we still have a month to go. It was 100 times worse than it is now a month ago, alot can change.

 

Well, you could play spamcraft 2 while you wait for sure. Ill pass thanks
I liked Fable 2.

And I love Starcraft 2. 

My main gripe about Elemental has been users who think they're playing some demo version rather than a beta.

Hopefully some people will be able to dig into the modding and show how easy it is to make spells and quests so people would quit sweating that sort of thing. We try to take care of the hard things first and the easier things later.

 

you were told no Starcraft 2 til elemental was done!!!...cant blame ya though..i do love the single player...skirmish on the other hand is just to shallow..starcraft 2 as a multiplayer falls a distance behind a company of heroes or forged alliance.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

starcraft 2 as a multiplayer falls a distance behind a company of heroes or forged alliance.

if anything its 1000 times better then those.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting KillzEmAllGod, reply 16

starcraft 2 as a multiplayer falls a distance behind a company of heroes or forged alliance.

if anything its 1000 times better then those.

 

Matter of opinion. I loved Starcraft, but SC2 made everything I hated about SC even worse (rushes, micromanagement, build order being all-important, etc), and didn't really improve on the good stuff in my opinion. But I digress, I don't want this to turn into another SC2 thread :P

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

zergling rush is the only way i can win in 2v2 gold league.

i would like to know how long until we get multiplayer back in elemental.

Elemental will never be finished.
so we are just going to get like 50 xpacks?

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

It's interesting hearing about different experiences and perspectives with games and impact those experiences have on expectations. I loved the GalCiv experience all the way through. Each version and expansion built on what was there but made it sooooo much better. I could never go back to anything other than the latest version now but I do remember how much I enjoyed GalCiv1 after the bitter disappointment of MOO3.

Your point about sifting the mod gold from the mod slurry is a vital consideration. I don't like being negative but the Stardock forum software, structure and performance leaves a lot to be desired and if this is the only method we have of trying to evaluate, classify and rank mods it is simply not going to up to par. Dominions 3 has a similar structure and it is a real pain trying to find good mods for that game without wasting eons testing all the crap as well.

Mount And Blade seem to have the best mod structure I've seen with their third-party mod repository. http://www.mbrepository.com/ You need to be logged in to see the filtering tools. It is basically a forum but structured to allow filtering and ranking. The developer still runs their standard forum and when a mod becomes big enough it splits from the main into its own sub-forum. All mod discussion and construction is handled on the developers forum but versions are referenced on the repository site where players comment and rank it.

Regarding your question of when is it worth playing? If it weren't for the instability I'd say it is worth playing now. Each week massive strides are taken with the game for each beta release and it is interesting to see how easily and quickly the dev's have been able to make major changes. By release it will have a heap more polish and balance.

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Storm, reply 20

llout3, only scratched the surface of FallfromHeaven2, etc etc etc) its clearly not worth playing Elemental in August. I'd be better off buying Starcraft


 

Amen!  Why deny yourself a great game because it'll one day be an Awesome game.  Play it some when it's great, then go back to your unfinished games when you need a break.  Come back and enjoy  Elemental later when it's patched or just because.

As far as skipping it for SC2, I'm doing the opposite. Instead of Speed Craft 2, I'm waiting for Elemental.

Well I am not playing SC2 (hate RTS bgames) however I will be playing both the Beta Elemental (which seems to crash all the time now on me since Beta 4 came out however I can go into the editors without crashing...weird) And AOW:SM.

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

Here's the public Sins of a Solar Empire mod area:

https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/sins_maps

Mod handling in Elemental will mostly be done in game. But we plan to have a public version on WinCustomize as well.

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 22
Here's the public Sins of a Solar Empire mod area:

https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/sins_maps

Mod handling in Elemental will mostly be done in game. But we plan to have a public version on WinCustomize as well.

You da man

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 22
Here's the public Sins of a Solar Empire mod area:

https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/sins_maps

Mod handling in Elemental will mostly be done in game. But we plan to have a public version on WinCustomize as well.

That would be good. :) This is just for maps, would the Elemental setup cater for separate mod classifications?

Reply #24 from Elemental Forums Top

I like how we can make spinning Statues .. :)

 

I have a spinning house hovering over a smokey pit of lava, guarded by a front lawn of pretty flowers and spinning statues, and guarded by a backlawn littered with tiny man-sized skeletons and a massive drake

;)

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top

oh an btw fail here
this isn't meant to be a negative post.
the post is negative albeit cleverly worded..

 

Well, I stand by my post, and it not being negative. It's meant to be pretty positive... I view Stardock as one of the companies who strive to make excellent games, (in a similar way to Fixaris, and not at all like Creative Assemblies).

 

And, surely some of you agree that games are usually more fun when you first play them... the sense of explotation, learning things, surprise etc. Sure, a good game will still be fun once you've "mastered" it, but, well, maybe it's me, but once i find that i know the tech tree and all the best strategies, I find a lot of the magic has gone.

 

So, with my CivIV example, I enjoyed playing it the most when it was first released. But the game got a lot better after the initial patches... and unfortunatly, the better the game got, the less I enjoyed it, as I had overplayed the early version.

 

Hence my post. I'm sure the game will be fun on release. I'm thinking that if i stick to the single player campaign at the start, then by the time I finish that, the "main sandbox" game will have been patched/balanced.

So, again, apoligies if I came across as negative. I wasn't intenting to. And I know that a lot of the balance patches, AI improvements, etc can only really be done AFTER release, with lots and lots of player feedback.

Plus, I'm interested too see how tactical battles will change. I'm sure I read somewhere that a reworked system was planned for 120 days after release?

 

And nobody seems to have answered the question about how mods will be sorted and distributed? i'm a little worried about Elemental's interesting lore being reduced with lots of user created generic orcs, elves, etc.