It's not a "stupid" way to look at it, it's my way to look at it. You can disagree, you can have your own view of what value is in a game. But don't go calling other people's frames of references stupid. THAT is stupid.

Two things here:  

1. I'm assuming here (and please correct me if I'm wrong) but I'd guess Tetleytea didn't laugh at the lost money.  He laughed at the obvious lesson that he had learned and had never thought of before (research before jumping on the bandwagon).  It's a lesson most gamers learn at some point.  
2. You take risks when you purchase things whether you admit it or not.  You have no choice in the matter.  What you call it or what you assume is irrelevant.  

WOM's problem was certainly not testing.  It was in alpha and beta for months on end.  The problems the game had have been detailed at length throughout this forum.  If you want to know the story, search for and read Brad's very open and honest posts about how Stardock screwed up.  He's never hid from it, much to his credit.  

As for blaming you for being upset... Meh.  You take the amount of risk when you make purchases that you're willing to take.  If you're not willing to shrug off a bad game purchase at a certain price point ($50, $20, bargain bin $10, whatever) then the onus is on you to do the research before purchasing.  If you had done that research (by spending 15 minutes searching and perusing these very forums) you'd have known that WOM was not likely to see much love past 1.4 and what the discount structure looked like for Fallen Enchantress.  

This fact doesn't change whether you're buying a house, a car, a TV, or any other item.  YOU, and only you, can decide what purchase level you're willing to impulse buy without research.  The implication is that you're willing to take the risk of a bad purchase because of your own lack of due diligence.  Companies produce legitimately bad products all the time.  Any consumer knows that fact.  Good companies learn from the experience.  Great companies make up for it.  Either way, it's on the consumer to know what their personal constraints are and to adjust their purchase habits accordingly.  

I think Achul misunderstood what we were saying.

Achul - It's not the length of the game that determines the hours, but how long it keeps us interested.  A $60 game may have 30 hours of gameplay, but if you stop playing it after the first 5 hours then the dollar to hour ratio is 12:1, not good.  On the other hand a $30 game with lots of gaming goodness that keeps you coming back for more (60 hours) has a great ratio of 1:2!  We're just saying we judge a game by how much of our time it comsumes, which is just another way of saying we value them on an individual basis.

Oh, and only Lord Xia is allowed to insult people on these forums, so please refrain from calling other peoples ideas stupid.

Any ideas I have are stupid!

It's always so hard to tell what someone means when they are using a second language, especially when writing it. Achul, to me, comes off as sarcastic. Maybe he is trying to be amicable or objective, but it doesn't seem so. Does stupid mean the same thing in our two cultures? I have been thinking about doing some research in the differences in written language and prose. 

*Please continue to debate*

Yes, most console games these days have "many hours" of gameplay. Unfortunately, 60%+ of that tends to be achievements and collectibles (I'm looking at you, Batman), which may be compelling gameplay if you're a jar of mayonnaise, but that doesn't really cut it for me. What matters is how long it holds interest and keeps you occupied. If I want quick thrills, I'll go ride a roller coaster :p

To me, what matters is that I enjoy the hell out of the time I play. The duration is secondary.

.. that's what she said.

The time I enjoy playing a game is the same as the duration I play it. Therefore, for me, it is relevant.

Am I supposed to bitch and whine about him calling me lazy (in a veil of fancy words) or should I adress the point?
That is the question.

I'll pick the second and show that as a matter of fact I do have thicker skin than a newborn baby!

Look. You all have valid points and I'm not really here to argue.
But debating is fun and interesting and while time is short for me now I'll give it a shot anyway.
I'm not sure if you have consumer rights in your countries, judging by some of my critics writting here it seems at least you, my critics, do not.
Neither do you seem to want them.

In Sweden any product is supposed to meet the criteria of normally acceptable standard for it to be sold.
For example if you buy a car and later notice it's running because half of its parts are glue or tied with ducktape then you have a right to complain.
In fact you have a right to demand your money back. It's not your fault but the fault of the croony seller for selling you the car without informing you about them.Certainly you can go even further if the car that you bought is from a certified cardealer and even sue him or the store you bought it from.

It's baffling to me that you would laugh away matters like this. I do not speak of a sub-par quality game here with amazing innovations that sells for some 20 dollars. I'm speaking of the fact that Kantok here takes up examples like TV's and houses. It's the internet and all and it's a common thing to exaggerate to make a point but at some point the question arises if the point can still be made with any exaggeration while in the case of the person not exaggerating the question of whether or not that someone has had to much to drink that evening comes to mind.

I'm not really willing to bash this game more especially since it has many qualities to so my following arguments apply to every game in general:

I don't feel I should have to search through tons of threads on a forum to find out if a game is going to get patched or not. I bought this particular game directly after the 1.4 patch and seeing all the patches before I thought that it was going to get patched all the way up to the exapnsion. Overall I'm sure we all, including me, take some time to read  the forums and check up reviews of games ahead of time but you never get the full picture this way anyway, especially in a case where constant change is taking place and each review becomes obsolote each season.

I follow mostly my gut and judge a product by the reputation of its creators. This goes for books and movies and games at least.
When someone with a in my mind low reputation releases something that seems interesting I am more "diligent" in my review of said product.
When someone with a in my mind high reputation releases something that seems interesting I am less "diligent" in my review of said product.

These reputations then go up and down depending on the products themselves and in rare cases I guess just like most responsible people I do try to demand a refund!

I guess you're not a fan of Portal 2 then...what was it... 5 hours of gameplay for 40 dollars?   
Yeah, I couldn't bare myself to buy it neither. Waiting for it to get down to 15 bucks or something where it belongs.

But judging things by the time they entertain you shouldn't be primary criteria since I'm sure we all have other ways to spend our time having fun that's nearly free or completely free. But to each his or her own, eh

edit: Actually I think you said it quite nicely there whether you meant it or not.
It's really bad if you quit a game that has 30 hours of gameplay after 5. That's probably a horrible game and you've been bored already.
But I don't think we would feel the same disappointment if we bought Portal 2, played for the measly 5 hours but had a blast playing those  5 hours.
Still I refuse to pay those overpayed Valve-designers so much for so little work considering they had the whole Portal 1 platform to work on to begin with :

edit: Whoo it is 15 euro.´Might get it now!

IIRC I got it on discount and got about 10 hours out of it, so it was comparable to most games bought at full price. Since it's a puzzle game, it actually has replay value as well (you never remember all the solutions).

Yes, I agree, but my wife only alots me couple of hours of free "fun" per week, so there's a lot of hours to fill.  While something short can be extremely entertaining, I generally hold things that keep my interest the longest in the highest regard.

What someone values their free time varies from person to person.

For me, the number of hours I spend is irrelevant. I just "know" whether I feel like I got a good deal out of it or not.

I'm playing Battlefield 3 constantly right now. That's a game that has definitely been worthwhile.

On the other hand, Ultima IX was a game I never was able to get very far into for numerous reasons (and goes to the point that even classic franchises have hit and misses).  I didn't feel I got my money's worth in that particular game.

Portal 2 was a blast to play even though the duration was short but I felt I got my money's worth.  So it's not time spent on the game but some other X factor. At least for me.

For WOM, as a gamer, I would have been happy with it because my approach to it was to use the built in tools to make my own worlds in just such a way and play them out. That was very fun for me.  For other people, the campaign, which to this day I've never played, was their focus (I've never played the GalCiv ones either except for Dark Avatar and that's only because I made it). 

Or take multiplayer as another example. The decision was made early on not to make the tactical battles be multiplayer capable (it's a very different type of programming) because we didn't think people would want to play tactical battles (I rarely played tactical battles in WOM and never do in HOMM).  This turned out to be something that bit us because people turned out to want to play tactical battles in MP even if they dragged the game on for hours and hours.

For FE, I've been leaning towards getting rid of MP entirely because of the cost/benefit ratio and because there's no way tactical battles could be made MP friendly without a total rewrite (i.e. they'd have to be message based - it's a coding thing) and I have come to recognize that it's better not to have something at all than to put out something that would be considered by many "half baked".

I would lose all hope if this one had MP without TB. But I seem to remember you saying something about feeding on despair, so do what you have to do. 

Maybe the blokes at Stardock should think about making an Elemental 2: Dungeon Master in the very distant future. Something geared towards a D&D style play in multiplayer with singleplayer only used to test the DM's creations. You would literally sell millions and Elemental seems like the right platform from which to launch such a game. So after E:FE and then E:TBD and even after GalCiv3 and all of its expansions, that would be a great project to work on. 

Until then, just keep refining the method and let those AAA companies drown in their own overproduced DRM loaded cesspools. Heart really counts when making games. They are a new medium of art. I hate to think of them as commodities as much as any other art form. That is how you lose at making them. 

This is an odd and ambiguous thing to say so close to the release of the beta.... I would think that MP tac battles would either be in or out at this point. Do you mean that they are out for the release but you may add them later or what? Personally I think it would be a huge shame not to have tac battles in MP after all the work you put in them. Oh well, I hope they make it into the 2nd expansion then.

I think Frogboy has to lobby to the lead game designer, who makes the ultimate decision. 

They feed on despair???

If there is MP, there is definitely not going to be tactical battle MP. It would require total recoding. So right now we're simply deciding whether we want to include MP at all given so many people will be disappointed without it.

I personally couldn't care less about MP in TBS games. The pressure of trying to rush through your turn takes a lot of the fun out of it for me. I love TBS games, but other genres are much better suited to MP.

I can't imagine a way tactical battles could be implemented in MP that wouldn't annoy me. Having two people who want to fight different battles and automate others seems like a recipe for frustration.

MP without the tactical battles doesn't seem like a solution to me either. A main draw of Elemental is designing troops and armies that work well together in battles. Autoresolving negates these advantages. It seems to cut out a huge chunk of the meaningful decisions a player can make.

I would agree that there is no point to implementing MP without tactical battles.

One option for the future if you want to include MP with tactical battles is to limit the number of turns the units with greatest initiative get in any particular battle each day (although I guess initiative could be affected by spells).  I know that there is no such thing as rounds now, so you would need some way to work out approximately what one "round" is.  But if each battle could only take a certain amount of game time and then you have to wait until the next day to continue to battle, that might work in terms of having MP with tactical battles without each player's turn taking too long.  And you'd definitely want some way to view your empire between turns too (M&M:H6 is totally the wrong way to do it as it essentially puts you in a coma until the next turn, no viewing stats, armies - nothing).

MP without full features will not please reviewers or fans.

If you go SP-only, then all features of the game have to be done well by the AI, even if it means removing features from the game itself.  This was the big flaw in FFH to me, too many things the AI just didn't do well.

I think having full-featured MP is the best option, though that depends on what resources are required for it.  It shouldn't be heavily supported though.  Maybe listing what would be cut if you did that , so the fanbase could see what the option is, would be for the best.

One idea here: maybe when the game is ready to go out of beta, implement full-featured MP last, or something else, and let the fans vote on it?  Then, if a reviewer asks, you can at least say that you responded to the wishes of the fanbase, who preferred x to y. That might save you on the review.

I do like StevenAus ideas of hard-limiting the number of "pulses" in a round of tactical combat.  If initiative pulses go over x, the remnants of both armies get stuck , any armies joining the battle afterwards also get stuck, and the next turn starts with that battle continuing.  Also any unit that goes adjacent to that square has to either join the battle or stop that turn (ZOC)

Another idea I'd like is for "tactics" in autocombat, you could do something like stall , assassinate (all out assault to kill champions/strongest unit) , or normal (try to win normally)  Ogre Battle is a good example of what I'd suggest being implemented.

FE would be cut before we re-did the entire tactical battle system to make it MP friendly. It's would require a total rewrite and add probably about 6 months - minimum - to the release date.

Did you know that only 23% of our user base ever even attempted to play Demigod multiplayer? Talk to any strategy game developer and they'll tell you that they put multiplayer in ONLY to appease game reviewers.  I remember talking to friends at Firaxis regarding Civ IV multiplayer.  The % of people who played a single game multiplayer was less than 2%.  They really believed that if they did it right in Civ IV that lots of people would play it.  It's not surprising that Civ V didn't push MP nearly as much.

That's why we're seriously considering pulling MP from FE because it's clear that not having tactical battles in MP would be considered a significant penalty by both gamers and reviewers. And rewriting the tactical battle system would blow up the budget entirely, all to appease less than 2% of the user base. 

That isn't to say that there won't ever be a tactical battle MP system in Elemental. But it would require a lot of work.

Those numbers don't really surprise me. I don't, and apparently most other people don't, buy TBS games to play online. I loved Civ IV and am loving Civ V and I've never played a single game online. It just doesn't make sense to me; I feel like I have to rush through my turn instead of taking time to figure out the best decision. I play RTS games for that experience.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if FE doesn't have multiplayer I won't miss it.

MHO, but MP for TBS just makes zero sense to me.  It's hard to match up opponents when both parties have to commit to more than an hour of time.  Just committing 1 1/2 hours to a single game like you do in Sins seems to severely erode interest in MP.  Sins MP...boy...now there's a hot cauldron of online activity.     MP in Starcraft 2 makes sense because it'll only be for 45 minutes tops.  Doom-like games you're only committing to like 10 minutes.  Diablo 2 you're not committing to anything--just log on and off as you please.  With Civ IV you're committing to hours and hours just with a single opponent--not to mention the most fun maps are completely imbalanced.  I don't get it.

The Total War series is TBS with tactical battles, and what they do is allow for drop-in opponents just for the tactical part (i.e. SP for the strategic, MP for the tactical if you want).  MHO again but I think that's stupid.  Does anyone seriously pick drop-ins for battles that aren't hopelessly stacked against the poor victim who takes you up on it?  This actually hurt TW:Napoleon's reviews, probably costing them a point on Gamespot. I suppose it's possible someone like Stardock could do it the other way around:  i.e. MP for the strategic but SP for the tactical.  How that would work, I don't know; but if you did, you would be the first.  I will give you that much.

What does make the most sense to me, though, is to go MP-only.  That way if you're on a limited budget, you can slash the AI.  Even then, though...Demigod for all practical purposes is MP-only.  How did that go?  MHO, but unless you are a big name like EA, it's reasonable to focus your resources either on all the network issues associated with MP, or on the AI.  If you do one or the other, at least you have a chance.  If you do a sucky job at both, you don't.  Put another way:  it's better to alienate half your user base than to alienate all of it.