Hi Frog,

I think it's safe to say we've come along way, but if you want to "demonstrate to our fans that Stardock HAS addressed the QA issues that bogged the initial release of the game", then don't release this yet.  It's not ready.  I understand that there are a lot of people (not very detail-oriented) who are enjoying this game and don't see any bugs.  But please let's not make the same mistake we did at release.  You have a lot of detail-oriented people like Heavenfall, Wintersong, and others who have pointed out lots of stuff that still isn't addressed.  I've played a couple of hours this morning and made how many bug and crash posts already?  Don't rush it!

If you release right now, you will show the world that we have made good improvements in the right direction.  But I don't think that's enough.  You want people raving about 1.1 not just saying we're headed in the right direction.  Thanks for listening.

There are still chrashes. But i have only a few. Nothing fun breaking. The game needs a lot more balancing (weapons, armor, spells), some features need more depth (AI! *i know you work on it*, tactical battles, dynasty, diplomacy, abilitys)  But overall for me it seems to be good for public. Its great fun to play. It totally eats my time. :) 

So take a week or two for tweaking and let it go

Crash with 1.09t. I hit the end turn button

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12734598/debug.err

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12734598/Elemental1_09t-2010-12-11T20-36-00-93.zip

And weird bandit city attack (bandit = comb.rat. 10 / city = comb.rat28) and pioneer attacks by Verga... (saves)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12734598/1%2009t%20Bandit%201.EleSav

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12734598/1%2009t%20Pioneers.EleSav

Update/

On the other hand... no need to rush or not? You wrote in the dev. journal the game is selling ok. So... maybe no need for christmas deal? ....ahh, i really dont know. whats best.

If it needs more time, by all means give it more time.  It feels solid to me.  The magic system is weird though.  I don't hardly use it anymore except to summon a familiar.  But it's certainly more interesting than el generico spellbooks before.

I only play in the initial game for a while then stop until I feel like coming back, so I haven't had time to go all out like some of these other people.

The only bug I've noticed is if I select the Max Texture Atlas of 1024x16384 on a 6870 and exit the game it resets to 1024x512.  Hadn't reported it because frankly it doesn't really bother me that much, and it might be fixed in future ATI drivers.  I don't know.

I've crashed every beta every 100 turns up until 1.09t, now I can play over 300 turns without crashing (after that I exited on my own).

I've had rare crashes.  I think they're rare enough that after balance tweaks and bugfixes, 1.1 release is feasible, though you'll probably need a 1.11 and 1.12 to finish things up.

Crashes are pretty much gone, but there are still a few significant bugs if you check out the support and general areas of the forum. Also before you release 1.1 you need to do a quick run through and polish! Make sure the descriptions of techs are accurate in particular. Right now half them don't do what they say they do and that will really throw people off this game.

Okay, after five hours I got one crash and noticed three makor bugs. One was a wierd shadow on heroe's portraits when I tried to change them from their original. Another was that my child, Ekaterina, was getting a very usefull +2 to health every combat round, a hilarious +2 to mana, and a very powerful 3x normal damage daring strike that went nicely with her sword of wrath (cheto). I will post these issues soon.

I'd say there is some work to done, but I sure am happy about what we have.

So I guess the question is, are you saying that users are better off with the October release than our current release?

The options are pretty straight forward:

[a] Keep users with v1.09 (October) until January and release v1.1 sometime in January

OR

[b] Release v1.1 in December and work on v1.2 for a January release.

I'd be curious on the consensus.

Most of the things you're talking about are not within the scope of v1.1.  In fact, none of them are.

Pop up screens you can disable.

I don't know what daring strike children are.

Spider groups are controlled by the world difficulty.

and the other issues you mention are cosmetic.  

We're in feature lock down at this point. Only crash bugs are being addressed. Everything else would have to be evaluated in some future update.

Must it be 1.1? Why not a "Public 1.09z" or something while the latest details of 1.1 are worked on?

I never had any crash issues in 1.09e outside of OOM issues. Based on that My opinion is if features are locked and you haven't added any crash inducing code then i'm ready for 1.1. Note I haven't beta tested any of the releases so this is purely from a non testers view.

 Its a number.. whats the difference in calling it 1.1 or 1.09z?

And a final note. Why does it matter if something is fixed in 1.1 or 1.2.. long as it get fixed I could care less which update it gets fixed in. If 1.1 was the FINAL patch it would be a different discussion..

Well Frog, of course 1.1 is better than 1.09. But 1.1 has been pitched as THE patch that will make Elemental complete and to be honest you are not there yet.

However, with 1.1 now in lockdown, I say release it asap so that you/we can begin working on 1.2.

v1.1 is designed to address the most significant issues we saw with the original release.  Its feature set is based on that.

IF the reason someone thinks we should wait on v1.1 is because of a feature they would like in, that's not the way to think of it.  v1.1's current feature set is the feature set. Hence Kael's "lock down" journal.  

At this stage, it's purely a question of stability. 

If you're only fixing crashes at this point, then you might as well ship 1.1 and start on the 1.2 features.  IMO, of course, but the outright crashes are very few and are much less important that the glitched mechanics and odd balance issues.

I feel like it may have been a mistake to lock 1.1 in so quickly, given how many people might (emphasis on "might", as I have no hard numbers) be looking for 1.1 as the big flag on whether or not Elemental is worthwhile.  It's better than 1.0x, by far, but still not a game that I could recommend to my friends with a clean conscience.  If features are locked though, then I'd really suggest moving on to the next layer of features known as "1.2" (which is not such a bad thing if it's really coming sometime in January - that's quick compared to the wait between release and 1.1).  Just hope it's enough to convince folks that the game is genuinely improving, even if it's still a debatable purchase due to balance and AI.

A, because Elemental will look more polished and you will not confuse the players with different gameplay mechanics (without initiative and casting time > with initiative and casting time).

Thank you for replying to my post earlier.

In my opinion, things have to proceed at some point.   The game can be fiddled with forever and there would still be people with issues, and there are some features (such as those you've mentioned in that post) that are simply unfeasible for this release.

My concern; the principle concern I think, for 1.1, is polish.   I think a friend of mine, whom I convinced to buy the game last week during the whole patch-fervor, summed it up well when we were talking about it when he said, "I am shocked that I am having such a huge amount of fun in a game of this quality."

What got me, and what's really poignant, is the of this quality caveat.

I think we've got the basic gameplay down, and as I said, some balancing could be used, but the overall feature set is 100% fine and reasonable for a 1.1 patch.   What we need is polish.   It's the polish--not just the game working without crashing every hour, or whatnot--but the little things, like unit cards that reset after you update them, incorrect tooltips, incorrect tech descriptions, weird stuttering, loading menu hints, the fact that food and population are formatted differently despite the fact that they function in the same way on the resource bar, children that regenerate mana that they do not have, and many other minor details--that are what make the game feel of less than AAA quality.   And there is an AAA quality game lurking under all of it.

It's these little things that give the impression of quality, of a buttoned down title.   It's things that, as constant players (and even moreso for you developers), can be easily glossed over simply because we know the game.   We have accepted and played around these details.   But it's the cumulative impression these little details give that form the first impression of whether a game has really improved or not, regardless of the fact that--when you get to the meat of the game--it has improved dramatically.   In fact, I daresay that we actually HAVE a game now, where before it was a collection of ideas that didn't quite mesh into a cohesive experience.

Work on these details.

If I were in your position--and I'm not--but if the reins were in my hands, I'd schedule a release for what seems to be our traditional patch release day of next Thursday the 16th.   And mirror the effort that we went through this week in getting the gameplay down into getting the presentation down.  Because that's where the impressions are made.  Because while the gameplay--the core experience--is what retains players, the impression that the game itself is shoddy is probably the hardest thing Elemental's going to have to shake off from its initial reputation release-day, and it's here where the ground needs to be made up.

The game is evolving rapidly and I have a 4 year old system running it. Same 4 year old install of Vista, by the way. I had problems earlier that were my own fault requiring me to turn off some things that didn't need to be running and now it runs very nicely!

You guys are really getting there and I would recommend this game to all strategy, RPG, turn base game fans. In the state that it is in now.

I'd say release 1.09u, then fix what bugs come from that, and release 1.1. I agree with most people that it still wont quite feel "finished" and polished, but I think it's MUCH better than the 1.09e release. (Both in stability and gameplay)

er, that isn't really on the table. Initiative was always going to be added in the first expansion, and casting time may never be added. Frogboy just said that Elemental is in lockdown and no new features will be added in 1.1.

I choose B. There are a few bugs left but you should be able to fix them before January.

Daring strike children are offspring that are overpowered with some bug that gives them the daring strike ability on every strike instead of on 3% of them. Children are fairly bugged at this point. They are also getting mana and health every turn, even though I think Derek took the mana per turn ability out of the xml, we are still getting the meaningless bonus.

I would say the end of December would be a good time to release based on the progress of lockdown in the last week. Just makes sure there are no really embarrassing bugs in your 1.1, like mana regen lol.

I'd say wait until January for 1.1. There are still plenty of bugs in the game and they need to be dealt with before you start moving on to other patches. Also, this would be an excellent opportunity for you (and Derek) to see what the team can do with an extra bit of time. 

EDIT: Tempestwrath made an excellent point. Take the time to make the game look polished!

I think you need more than just a few days of testing.

What makes this the 1.1 release, is the AI really that much better?

Is there documentation or an updated manual to explain all of the changes from the initial release?

If there are plenty of bugs (i.e. not features) then we need to start discussing them. At this stage, we're getting pretty low on known issues.

For v1.2, we're looking at refining mechanics and polish polish polish.  

I think it might be advisable for some people to go out and try playing v1.09 (the official last release version).  

We'll never have full agreement on things like game mechanics, UI, etc. We could spend years on that (heck, look at GalCiv and Sins, there's still plenty of people who think those games are "broken").  

I'm trying to look at things from the vantage point of people getting this game for Christmas and what version do we want them to be playing out of the box.  v1.09 or v1.1.

The choice isn't what we have and some idealized version of the game. It'll take years to reach that if ever as that's a never ending battle.

If the consensus is that we should push v1.1 into January, we can do that but it could effectively end Elemental if it's the wrong choice since this Christmas is, effectively the first impression most people will get of the game (sales are already starting to reach a new height and I see some of the support tickets from v1.09).  That's why it's important to make the determination of which game is better - v1.09 or v1.1 (what we have + fixes and tweaks).

The AI for v1.1 is what it is.  I won't be making any significant updates to it until v1.2.  I can say, I'm fairly satisfied with where it is right now.