I'm befuddeled by the logic at times.

Damion_Scott

Join Date 04/2008

I'm befuddeled by the logic at times.

And I don't mean in the game, I mean by the people on the board and to a lesser extent the guys working on Elemental. I want to get my premise straight first, because if it is wrong, I'll jump right back on here and apologize at the top of my lungs to everyone involved.

A while back Frogboy posted that version 1.2 of the game was going to be bug fixes (which is good), and that 1.3 would be adding features to improve the game play (even better), he also said that after 1.3 if things still weren't working right then they would move on to Fallen Enchantress and address all the issues there. As a business, this makes perfect sense and I can see the logic there.

Where my logic flaw comes in is some of the fans on the site who have taken the "Well, Elemental is so screwed up that I don't really care for it anymore, but as soon as FE is released I'll be right back in." I know the term fan derives from fanatic, so having blind faith in a company that couldn't get the current game to be something that the fanatic enjoyed in the first place will get it right the second time makes sense to them, but I can't bring myself to that level. I almost feel like I'm being abandoned. I know that with limited resources, it makes sense to apply those resources to the games that have the best chance to be enjoyed and make the company money, but finding out that a game that was released with more bugs than a July picnic is being bailed on to concentrate on the next one just kind of leaves me feeling hollow. Stardock is far from the first company to move on to the next project, but quality of their games is one of the reasons I buy games from Stardock without hesitation compared to waiting for reviews from other companies, or companies I refuse to buy from (I'm looking at you Interplay/Bethesda)

That being said, I don't believe that the company is making this decision light heartedly. Like I said, it makes business sense, and this is a business. I'll also say that I love Stardock, for me, they are a great local company (I'm waving from my house in Dearborn) that has made some of the games I've enjoyed the most. I'll continue to play their games and look at the new ones as they come out. I hope FE comes out and blows everyone away with how good it is. But please forgive me if I hold off to see what happens before I buy it.

Let the attacks commence.

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Thormodr

Join Date 09/2009

+11

Sounds good to me. Bring on the beta so we can beat that beat up. I mean beat that beta up. (That is playtest it and work all the kinks out so it isn't so kinky.)

Errr...I'll stop now.

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Quoting BoogieBac,

reply 25

Quoting alborrelli, reply 24why they were so quick to rush into FE and almost completely abandone EWOM

I can't give Brad or Dereks view on all this, but from my point of view it boils down to "How good can a game with a 53 metacritic score become through traditional updates." Tweaking existing systems and adding new stuff is one thing - major overhauls to the core game require an entirely different pipeline. In-flux builds of FE can be gruesome to behold

I think that's what a lot of people don't understand. Well, that and a curious definition of "quick to abandon" considering WoM came 9 months ago.

It's not like this is a normal tweaking job. There's major work that needs doing to make Elemental into a good game, and the best way to do it is to hit the proverbial reset button and go back to work. Just trying to patch it means shorter development cycles and a lot of untouchable stuff.

If people want a good game to come out at the end of this, it's time they stop whining about how that game won't be called WoM. WoM is what it is, and it's not going to magically turn into a game of the year winner.

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Quoting Tridus,

reply 27

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 25
Quoting alborrelli, reply 24why they were so quick to rush into FE and almost completely abandone EWOM

"I think that's what a lot of people don't understand. Well, that and a curious definition of "quick to abandon" considering WoM came 9 months ago."

Is it really far to say the game came out 9 months ago when it was admittedly not playable? Shouldn't the date that the game is judged on be at the least version 1.1, when the game was at least stable enough to get into the game?

It's kind of like saying my book came out yesterday because I published the first sentence.

"It's not like this is a normal tweaking job. There's major work that needs doing to make Elemental into a good game, and the best way to do it is to hit the proverbial reset button and go back to work. Just trying to patch it means shorter development cycles and a lot of untouchable stuff."

That being the case, shouldn't this game be considered the beta test for FE? If 9 months after the game comes out it's still not stable and there are still AI/balance issues, is it something that should cause you to have faith that the company will 'get it right next time'? (that's how the thread started after all)

"If people want a good game to come out at the end of this, it's time they stop whining about how that game won't be called WoM. WoM is what it is, and it's not going to magically turn into a game of the year winner.

To be honest, I haven't seen anyone complain about it not being MOM2 in a while. What they are doing more now is discussing how things can/have improved and what they hope for in the next game/expansion. My question to start this whole thing was more of what made people so eager to forget the debacle that was the initial release of this game and look forward to the next one?

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ScottTykoski

Join Date 03/2001

+132

Quoting Damion_Scott,

reply 28

To be honest, I haven't seen anyone complain about it not being MOM2 in a while

I think Tridus was commenting on the outcries that E:WoM isn't being overhauled (and made perfect) before we move onto E:FE.

And I think that's why you see people excited (or, more universally, 'cautiously hopefully') for Fallen Enchantress. It's the "Major Update" that has the best chance at making the game fun. Because it's not part of a traditional update path (where the game needs to be release-ready every week or two) we got to rip, patch, change, and really overhaul Elemental, all according to a design foundation that was built from ALL the feedback we received, press and players alike.

And, most importantly, when were stuck on a design point, our fallback is [now] always 'what did MoM do?'....so perhaps folks will get a bit of MoM2 afterall

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From my end, you guys were damn close to finding the right core balance for the game, that would have allowed you to move on to making the content it lacked and to develop the features that the game play had clearly set up.

And then you guys announced Fallen Enchantress and I was like "Really? After you guys bled and got flamed and sweated so much, through so many re-writes, when you're on the eve of real stability....you shift focus?"

I'm glad you guys still personally want to work on Elemental, and will put money toward that. Maybe without the whole forum and press breathing down your necks, you can finally work in a way that yields better, more stable work that you're more pleased with.

My watermark is still this game, because it's what I wanted to play, not something dialed down closer to the hero level. The game is still sitting here capable of still rising to meet expectations. With enough work and enough content, it could deserve a re-release and actually make back some money.

So yeah, I'm hoping you decide the game is worth staying with beyond 1.3. But my consumer confidence took a serious hit and is pretty low, and while E:WoM may seem like a millstone to you guys, it's still the thing I'm watching that my confidence is tied to. Not Fallen Enchantress. Sticking with WoM because it's actually a good game and can still grow, and not just because we expect it, is what will bring my confidence back up in Stardock.

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Quoting Damion_Scott,

reply 28

Your first post also said stuff like "I feel abandoned" and "but finding out that a game that was released with more bugs than a July picnic is being bailed on to concentrate on the next one just kind of leaves me feeling hollow.", so it seemed like you're one of the people who wants WoM to get an overhaul rather then that overhaul being FE. Aplogies if I misread.

To answer this specific comment - a lot of what caused the WoM debacle isn't true anymore. This time the engine isn't being built from scratch. The development process is a lot more structured and seems to have learned a great deal. There's a tremendous amount of feedback on what worked and what didn't for people to use.

Plus, if you look at their posts, Derek is a lot more conservative in what he talks about. When he mentions specifics on what they're building, I feel pretty confident that said specifics are on a plan somewhere and are thus likely to actually turn up. Comparatively if you look at the history of the dev journals, Brad talked about all kinds of stuff that never saw the light of day. Expectations were way off on WoM because there was no way to figure out what was "actual stuff" and what was "Brad theorizing". Take the economics discussion for example, which probably still stands as the single best thread on this site. Brad gave us a bunch of potential models, and a great discussion ensued about them for quite a while. What we actually got resembles none of it and inevitably people were disappointed that we got a highly simplistic economic model instead of the ones that the company owner pitched at us during development.

Yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic about FE. Compared to WoM it's got an already working engine, a more experienced team, an experienced project manager, and realistic expectations. Plus I'm getting it free. With the deck stacked that much in favor of FE, what's not to like?

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