I will reiterate, in the name of making my "vote" in this matter clear (As it can be obscured easily by my long-winded walls of text), that I personally feel that Thursday is a reasonable amount of time to iron out what minor issues that are left that need ironing.    I guess this is kind of a moderate stance compared to the "release it now" and "wait until it's absolutely perfect and flaweless."  (as slightly changing stats a bit and retyping new descriptions for things isn't likely to introduce anything gamebreaking)

 If 1.1 has addressed so many issues then this seems like a rhetorical question to me. Pump out as many stability fixes as you can and call it a release imho.

An important point to add to the brads topic above.

If you are still selling 1.09, start selling 1.1.

Releasing 1.1 in December could also be the wrong choice and could also end Elemental since 1.09 is a bit more polished than 1.1 even though it has less features. This may sound harsh but you guys had your chance to make an impression on customers and that was on August 24th 2010. If you start worrying about holiday release dates and Christmas impressions instead of actually releasing quality patches then there's nothing stopping you from making the same mistakes you did on release. Take the time and comb through the support forum for bugs.

Plenty of crashes. Most seem to happen when end of turn/start of turn is processing and I try to do stuff like move the screen, zoom the map or select units. It doesn't happen all the time...but I've had it happen as quickly as 5 minutes in, or as last as 2 hours.

Also, despite the stated fixes for Empire Adventuring tech (I think that was prior to 1.09s?), they still don't work. At least not with a game started in 1.09s. Starting with adventuring techs get you to level 2, you can go to level three, but then all other researches just refresh the level three good hut spawns, and your level never increases.

Agreed. Stardock made an epic attempt to get the game ready for Christmas, but it's simply not ready still. Unless there are internal builds that are by far more stable than these betas. Trying to get into the Q3 window was what caused Elemental to have such a rocky release. Don't compound the problem by racing to meet another sales deadline.

If you're having stability issues with the betas, please post about them.  One thing we don't want is to release v1.1 and have people come out and say "I can't believe they released this! It's buggy!" when the forum has gotten pretty quiet.  

The current build 1.09t is still not stable enough for release, but it's getting pretty close.

I got to say, I'm surprised you guys have had no crashes internally in this build. This is one of the more stable builds, but no build has ever been crash free for me, ever. And I found Elemental *relatively* stable at release. If you're willing to answer, how long do you honestly give each build in terms of just straight play testing? Because I guarantee you will hit a crash if you test for a solid 2 hours. Hit end turn then screen grab while it's processing stuff and chunking along, you can probably get it to crash right there. I've actually gotten super paranoid about doing ANYTHING after I click the end turn button, until I'm convinced it's done handling the AI, because it has blown a gasket reliably doing that. Not 100% reproducable, but I'd say 25%.

Then post debugs and saves because your apparently one of the few people having these crashes. My game and the games of many other people on this forum work fine. If you don't post your crashes then no one else will, and they will be ignored and never fixed.  

We have games that are lasting literally thousands of turns without crashes.

Here is list of some things that should be cleaned up before you release the 1.1 patch.

Visit Store

1. (bug?) Padded Armlets has the same texture as Leather Armlets, in 1.09p they had the same texture as Padded Greaves.

2. I've post numerous times on why some items that champions can't be sold or why some items have no value?

Clothes

3. What's the point of clothes, when they become unusable when wearing armor?

Research

4. You can't build anything because, you don't have enough housing or food, there is no easy way to look this up, to find out what you need to research to get you more.  Catch 22, you can't build a farming guild to get more food because you don't have enough population and you can get more population because you can't build more Huts because you don't have enough food!

5. The game needs a tech tree, so you can see what to research to get what you want/need!

City Detail Screen

6. You still can't find out about housing vs. population capacity, without counting huts then multiple by 25.

7. You can't even see the number of buildings you have, number of Workshops, Huts, etc. without counting.

8. You can't even get a list of what buildings are making money vs. which are costing you money without looking at each and every building type!

Documentation

9. Updated Manual or create a player guide on the changes in gameplay.

You can click on each entry in the Research screen and it will tell you what it is, what it needs and what it leads to. You can read all the way up the tech tree doing this.

Well then I can see why you're asking us if we're crashing....but on my end I can tell you that's most definitely not the case...nor is it just glancing at the Support forum. I haven't been hardcore submitting crash reports but I guess I'll start since you guys seem to be out of them on the systems you're running. But I can count at least three places where I'm seeing it crash repeatedly.

Guess I'm going to play some (more) Elemental.

@pad: While all the things you mention are things that I think should be addressed in a future update, none of them are things we would hold back v1.1 for. Heck, my GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor pet peeve list has things on it like that.

None of those things you listed are bugs or stability issues. They're change requests -- ones I happen to agree with but change requests nevertheless.

@Nenjin: I still experience some crashes as well so I don't want to suggest that I think we're "there" yet. I just want to make gauge where others are on this.  

The problems I am running into tend to be deadlock issues (competing critical sections between threads). 

If we're starting to get to requests being changing textures or something, then that indicates to me that we're about ready to move to v1.2.  But before we can release v1.1, stability needs to be very solid.

Ya since were nearing the end of this beta cycle i'm finally downloading a beta patch to look for stability issues myself.

I've had some out of memory crashes, and crashes when I load from inside the game too many times.  I'll work to see if I can get some more, then I'll report them.

Best regards,
Steven.

This being said.. I can see why it may be a good idea to release 1.1.. I do suggest that if done it is made abundantly clear to those who install (most importantly new users) that you recognize that there are facets of game mechanic and polish that are being reworked and that 1.1 is the stability patch upon which all future changes need to be made.. from what I am reading here many of the issues being called bugs (and indeed some are) are not the crash issues that  most of what 1.1 was designed as fix for...

Under the above understanding I recommend release 1.1 so the next phase in Elemental's growth into what we all hope it can be, may begin..

This is completely other question and not "is it ready to show to general audience?"

Of course it's better, but it has some issue I can't believe are intended features (like resetting unit cards or double idle city pop-up or tile skipping in tactical to mention few).

If they are not intended I don't know how to call it if not bugs.

If you want to put the 1.1 at current state in the box then.. why not, if the people will buy the game whatever the version will be. They will surely have more fun with it then  with 1.09 (unless they'll got freeze on the first 15 turns).

Your right that they are not game killers and I'm happy they are going on some ones list  but, some may see it as a not paying attention to the details, a quality issue and some of them will just frustrate new players.

I'm seeing a lot, lot less creatures in 1.09t, vs. 1.09p anyone else seeing this?

This is my feeling too. It's not the grand design problems bogging Elemental down anymore, it's all these...I hate to say it, thoughtless errors that really detract from the game experience. The broken and un-connected stuff that litters the game (which I will say you guys are cleaning up with every patch.)

If you guys can get THOSE things nailed down, and the majority of crashes and bugs killed by when you need to put up a release version....then I say, release it by Christmas and it will be the "better" game.

I can wait on the game to continue growing into its shoes, if those other issues haunting the game from release are cleaned up. (Mentions of essence. Out-dated/unconnected techs. Gratuitous use of the handful of quests that work as padding for adventuring content.)

If you DON'T think you can get all that stuff cleaned up, fixed, removed and/or connected by...what, Dec 19th? 20th? Then I'd recommend pushing back to January, because it will give the game yet another black eye when users hop on to play and stuff like their techs don't do what they say they do.

For me, the point at which I stop a game of Elemental is when I know that ALL the later game stuff I'm building towards has issues. Adventuring particularly, but late game AI, itemization, techs and dynasties, and their current states, all make me go "eh" when I realize I'm playing toward rocky and/or broken content. That is NOT the impression you want new players to end up with.

The beginning/mid game of Elemental is very fun, and very addicting. But you hit a wall there at some point, for all the above mentioned reasons.

(PS- Not saving the unit card info....would love to see that fixed asap.)

It's stable enough for me. Go for 1.1.

(Option

Since some people seem to keep repeating themselves in the vaguest terms, I will be very specific. These are the things that I think need to be fixed(not added) before the patch should be out of beta. Although you should probably just release the game in December anyway becasue 1.09e is horrible compared to the beta even with some annoying bugs.

1. The Monster bug needs fixed.

2. Children currently extremely bugged. They don't always start as channelers, and they have weird stats like 1 movement. See this thread for more information: 

https://forums.elementalgame.com/401929

3. The tech research descriptions should be updated because several are very outdated and would really confuse newcomers.

There are several other bugs mentioned in the support forum. I don't think any of these should push back release, you should be able to fix them quick.

I've been very critical of Elemental and know there will be a lot of players coming back to Elemental with the release of the 1.1 patch, cleaning up the little issues as well as the big ones will go a long way to turn people around this time, 100% agree here.

From a cold, logical stand point, the sooner the update is released the better unless it introduces new crashes.

Holding the release until January accomplishes nothing. You're going to want to give every new player (and every returning player) the best possible experience as soon as you can, which means releasing 1.1 as soon as it is as stable as possible and starting on 1.2.

Holding the release until Jan is akin to a restaurant owner stock piling rat poison, so that he can kill all the rats in one large epic swoop. The restaurant owner would be wiser to use all the poison at hand immediately and prevent / satisfy health codes than to wait and possibly get closed or turn off customers from the food.

"Stable as possible" is what's up for debate. You could argue from SD's point of view that it's there already since they can reliably go thousands of turns without a crash. That would be the total opposite of the user experience though.

IMO pushing back to January is about delivering what you say you're delivering: a clean, stable game. That has to be true on the user's end as well as the developer's. Stability....will come and go for everyone, to lesser or greater degrees. That's something you just have to bite the bullet on.

But the "clean" issues are totally within SD's control. And I suspect a lot of the game's cleanliness issues relate directly to stability. The cleanliness issues have been there forever...and the pace of development on Elemental has only increased since then.

I mean, when stuff in game regularly calls on out-dated content, should we really be surprised when it crashes? Like renaming your sov's wife after you marry her....she has the name you've given her, but on the dynasty screen she's got her original name....AI's use the "core" name when they go seeking the character tags.

In this version alone, the game somehow LOST the portrait for my sov's wife after a reload. I clicked her and it was black. Which means it knew who she was enough at one point in game to find her unit card, but lost the ability to later. Once I clicked edit card info, it came back. But you see what I mean? Inconsistency in one area begets inconsistency in related areas.

That's all cleanliness stuff, and if those level of mistakes exist deeper in the game, which causes all these crashes....then it's still simply not ready.