Stardock's new game -- Elemental: War of Magic

[al Roumi]

That's the thing - if all PC games were this price there wouldn't be a problem at all. Because they're not it brings relative value into play for anyone who doesn't have a big games budget. What does Elemental offer that makes it worth so much extra compared to, say, Civ 5? The answer is nothing much.

It's a particularly bad time for Stardock to ask people to make this judgement. There's a lot of new strategy games out this summer, including two giant names and one popular niche title. These are the kind of games that people play for a long time after purchase; they're not 10 hour and done forever jobs where an owner would be considering a new title relatively soon after purchase.

Elemental is going to miss out on a lot of potential sales. For a game that's not destined to be a multi-million best seller that's not a good place to be headed.

I agree, viewed in a vacuum of non-competiton -i.e. ignoring CIV5's release in a month, I can see why Stardock by kept EU sales to DD and at higher price -they are an Indie developer with their own DD system after all. But clearly, having 2 city builder titles out so close together is going to force a fair degree of competition. I hope they have diversified Elemental from Civ enough for it to be seen as something other than fantasy CIV. From stardock's point of view, at least they are releasing Elemental before CIV5, if it were the other way round, I think they would suffer more than they likely will.

Anywho, enough about pricing. There's more exciting things to talk about - the game's out early.

The bricks and mortar shops broke street date so the download version is going up early too. There doesn't seem to be an ETA for the download becoming available, just a note that it will be done as soon as possible. If you've pre-ordered I'd open Impulse up and see if it finds anything.

I didn't check this morning before going to work, but I received an email yesterday informing me that I would be able to download the game today. There probably isn't much point checking before 12 or 1pm BST though as I think Impulse only updates at that time.

On the Stardock forum, they said the decision to allow early access to pre-orders was to assuage the pressure on their servers come release day.

[Xiahou]

I started downloading it last night. I didn't get to see if I could play yet or not though. After I get home from work, I'll definitely be taking a look.

[Crandaeolon]

Got it. Right now I have this to say: do not buy this game for its MP. Tac battles, quests and probably other features as well have been taken out of release version MP. *sigh* Looks like Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is still the best MoM'esque game for multiplayer.

[Xiahou]

They're putting tactical battles back in MP due to the overwhelmingly negative response the decision recieved on the forums. They claimed they did it to keep up the pace of MP.

No time for any detailed impressions yet.... I got to spend a little time with the "campaign"(story) mode, but it's been reworked some for the day 0 release, which I haven't looked at yet. The version I played was ok, but rather uninspired. It kept my interest, but I think the main point was to introduce you to the game. The real substance is probably in sandbox and MP modes. Regardless, I think the final game engine looks beautiful.

[Krusader]

Been trying my hand at the sandbox mode to learn the ropes...have to say its changed much since beta. Can build farms, libraries etc without needing the knowledge and no watchtowers or barracks either. Also they've removed farms, so took some minutes until I realized I could only get food from special bonus tiles or from irrigation at level 2 city :S
But is there a cap for how many cities you can have? Built 4 so far and I'm not allowed to build a fifth. Also, see sovereigns can only build the capital and Essence plays no part.

So far it seems good enough, but I actually miss some small stuff from beta.

[al Roumi]

So far it seems good enough, but I actually miss some small stuff from beta.

Sounds liek you are going back to beta3a or something like that. there have definitley been a few chanegs since then. The only way to "get" resources of any kind (even tech and archane research) is through special tiles, e.g. wheat, mineable rock and "old growth trees". There are a couple of buildings that provide "1" research or minerals but they are only there to start you up really. Success or failure comes in controling tiles on the map, which is done by building cities and expanding their influence (which is automatic and happens as they grow, as in CIV4).

Incidentaly, I would probably advise people to hold off buying the game for a bit. Many who have waited till now and didn't take the plunge during the beta seem quite disappointed, to say the least. I felt the same as many of these people did with ETW (I had hoped to buy a polished game) so I sympathise. On my system (Win7 64), it's actually not as stable as beta 4 was...

[frogbeastegg]

It’s like watching the Demigod release all over again. I'm reading impressions on various places and while I see some good news I see plenty more bugs, missing features, complaints about an obtuse interface and a lack of in-game feedback on how things are working and why, calculation problems, and things which are blatantly not what they were advertised to be.

The random map issue alone has me wondering what Stardock were thinking. It's not a random map generator, no matter how hard they insist it is. Stardock themselves admit it uses a small collection of seeds to shuffle resources around a small selection of pre-built maps. The reason I saw Brad give for this is that it's hard to build a random map generator. Decade old games have solid random map generators built in, as did GalCiv2, and the 5 year old Civ4 has the random map generator to rule all; the mind boggles. More pre-built maps will be added later, supposedly. That doesn't really fix the problem and it's a massive negative IMO against the game's lifespan.

Meanwhile the gamer's bill of rights has been removed from Stardock's website. For those who don't remember the bill of rights included a section about how all games should be released complete, amongst other things like the right for a refund if a game doesn't work.

I hope they can fix this one. I really wanted it to be good; I love the genre and I loved GalCiv 2.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Meanwhile the gamer's bill of rights has been removed from Stardock's website. For those who don't remember the bill of rights included a section about how all games should be released complete, amongst other things like the right for a refund if a game doesn't work.

Man, just when you thought you found a developer with a philosophy you could use to beat up nastier developers with...

[frogbeastegg]

Huh. The bill of rights thing has started a sub-war in the sea of turmoil that is Elemental commentary. People are insisting that nothing changed; some of the more ... colourful personages suggest that it's all a conspiracy to make stardock look bad. Meanwhile others continue to insist that the site's gone.

Before posting the above I checked the rumour myself. It's gone. That is, the version on stardock's own site is gone. That version is the first links you get when you google 'stardock gamer's bill of rights'. The bill's own stand-alone website remains. I found it only by following the link given by one of the people insisting that it was still up.

The state of the game is subject to a similar war of opinion. I say war because it's really getting quite nasty out there and there's increasingly little middle ground. Supposedly the version burned onto retail discs and released on Impulse is not the final game. It's an unfinished version, possibly or possibly not intentionally buggy. I keep seeing the pro-Elemental folk mentioning an official declaration that content was ripped out of the game in order to release this version but not a single one of them has linked to or quoted the source of this info. It was supposed to be fixed up with the release day patch. That might explain a lot. It doesn't make the situation look any better - it leaves Stardock knowingly selling a bad version of the game to customers, and then releasing a bad version as a 'bonus' so people purchasing directly from them didn't lose out compared to those buying at retail. Why oh why oh why do this?! And why not get that release day patch up at the same time as the game download? It's insane! They've ensured that a lot of the early word of mouth is negative and that's often a killer.

Crazy. Whether it's got any truth in it or not, it's crazy. Crazy truth or crazy excuses.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I got the game...
It's clearly not polished on the verge of unfinished. Plenty of details missing, wrong text, clumsy UI, poor camera work etc... The way the stat works is not obvious and is a bit worrying.
However, I found it pretty stable, no crash, and the normal mode delivers. The campaign got everything I hate in a Homm kind of game, that is bad gameplay all around, and much, much less fun than the sandbox game.

It's OK. However it does not really look like it has what it takes to be MoM heir. It will need a hell of a lot of modding to get there, or incredible patching.

Louis,

[Xiahou]

Let me start out by saying that I have had no stability issues whatsoever on any of the 1.x versions- and I'm using an ATI card on Win7 64bit. The combination that is supposedly causing so many crashes. I don't doubt that people are getting crashes, but it's clearly not all ATI/64 bit combinations.

Supposedly the version burned onto retail discs and released on Impulse is not the final game. It's an unfinished version, possibly or possibly not intentionally buggy.

That's really a matter of symantics. What's "finished"? If that means bug free, then no game is ever finished. However, if the retail release is broken and unplayable, that's a different matter. I can't vouch for the retail version- I don't have it.

I keep seeing the pro-Elemental folk mentioning an official declaration that content was ripped out of the game in order to release this version but not a single one of them has linked to or quoted the source of this info.

What content?

I think Stardock went wrong when they released the "Pre-release" version because stores were breaking the street date. It was a good idea in theory, but most people aren't going to know that your pre-release isn't the official release and are going to judge the game based on it. They should have just kept the release date.

Similarly, I think they also made a mistake in advancing the release date to August at all. They should have kept it at early 2011- but there were probably financial reasons for that. Not having MP servers ready to go at launch looks very unprofessional. Really, I disagree with the concept of requiring their servers for MP at all. We should be able to run our own (that's coming at a later date supposedly).

Honestly, I like the game and it's only going to get better as they add free content and I certainly don't regret buying it. But I think from a marketing/PR standpoint, Stardock has made several key missteps.

Edit:I just looked at the PCGamer article that seems to be at the center of the controversy. Based on my experience, the article is a bunch of inflamatory nonsense.

Elemental: War of Magic was released in some stores and for pre-order customers on Monday, a day ahead of schedule. It’s a mess. As PC gamers we’re used to launch day patches and bug fixes – that’s part and parcel of gaming on our platform. However, the scale of Elemental’s pre-patch problems is appalling and we want to warn you to stay away from the game for now.

As I've said, I played the pre-release version's campaign for about 3 hours. I experienced zero crashes or glitches. Not one. Now obviously, not everyone would have the same experience, but to call it "appalling" is a stretch.

[frogbeastegg]

That's really a matter of symantics. What's "finished"?

In the context I've seen it being used in it should be taken as "Not the version stardock wanted people to be playing and judging on the official release day."

What content?

Your guess is as good as mine. None of the people saying it provide links or quotes, only statements about how stardock told people this was so while preparing the download non-beta version that they then put up for pre-order customers to get after the retail date was broken. The most detailed anyone has been is saying that some of the content added after the beta and intended to be in the final version were ripped out, creating bugs and crashes because of the gaping holes left in the code. These features should then be added back by the planned release day patch.

Edit:I just looked at the PCGamer article that seems to be at the center of the controversy. Based on my experience, the article is a bunch of inflamatory nonsense.

I hadn't read that, and would not be surprised if it were inaccurate. I don't pay much attention to paid reviews or journalist sites; I prefer to head to the forums and independant sites, and see what the gamers say. After all they're playing the same version as I would, play for longer than a handful of hours, have some interest in the title to begin with, and tend to be a lot more honest because there's no concern about maintaining audiences and revenues.

It's honestly rather annoying. All of the bother is growing at a rate which puts the average fast-replicating virus to shame, and is obscuring the conversation I am interested in. I want to hear how the AI is, about the not-randiom map generator, about how the game plays, that sort of thing.

Think I'm going to stop watching Elemental for a bit now; my time would be better spent playing a game than attempting to sift out useful material in all of this. I'll give it a few weeks and a couple of patches. It's not like I'll be buying it any time soon; I'm more curious as to what I'm missing out on ... or not as the case might be. I might pick up MoM from good old games for the weekend.

(Latest development is that Brad Wardell apologises for some of his comments which helped to grow this mushroom, and gives a few answers from stardock's POV)

[Martok]

I'd already decided a couple days ago when the uproar first started to do my level-best to steer well clear of the whole thing. It appears some people seem to be either overreacting, and/or had unrealistic expectations that the game was going to be this perfectly flawless gem right out the box. At the same time, it sounds like Stardock did in fact screw up the release in at least a couple different ways -- including how Brad reacted to some of the criticism.

I dunno. Like I said, I'm staying out of it for the time being, and am going to do my best to simply focus on the game's merits (or lack thereof).


I do have Elemental downloaded from Impulse, but I'm waiting for my boxed LE copy to arrive before I actually sit down and play it. (Barring something untoward happening, I believe I'll be getting it tomorrow.) Soon, very soon....

[Xiahou]

Ok, so I set aside my "Campaign" game to give the sandbox game a shot. After about 200 turns, I have noticed no crashes or major glitches. I noticed 1 research tech had the wrong description in its text- that's it....

I started out as one of the Fallen empires (I've always played a kingdom before and thought I was due for a change). I set the world size to "large", world difficulty to "normal" and there are 6 major factions -3 empires and 3 kingdoms- myself included. For 2 of the Kingdoms, I bumped their AI to "Challenging" the rest I left "normal". The choices for pacing are: "Epic", "Normal" & "Fast"- I chose "Epic".

I'm enjoying the game very much. Unfortunately, I can't really comment on the current state of the AI, since aside from 1 minor faction, I haven't yet encountered anyone. If the AI's any good at all, I'm probably going to be in trouble once I meet one of the challenging level ones. I'm building my sovereign up to be a major spell caster, but I think I may have neglected expansion too much- time will tell. I bumped into the minor faction pretty early on in the game and they were occupying some real estate I wanted. So, as soon as I researched my first offensive spell I sent my sovereign in solo. She defeated their sovereign and 2 other units in the field, forcing the sovereign back into his city. Then she defeated him and 3 other units in the assault on the city, killing him and capturing the city.

Since then, I've been trying to explore, but the areas outside my cities seem to be rife with spiders and my mana is limited and slow to regenerate.

Here's a screenie of my meager empire:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Crandaeolon]

I'd really, really like to support Stardock and I really, really want to like this game, but... not only is it not finished (descriptive texts, UI, effects and so on), it's also rather badly designed. The most glaring example: for something with the grandiose title "War of Magic", the magic aspect is really underdeveloped. IMO even MoM did magic better - 16 years ago. AoW: Shadow Magic is 7 years old, and it trounces Elemental in pretty much every aspect except empire building, which really is not all that necessary in a fantasy game.

In its current state, Elemental will be destroyed in reviews.

[al Roumi]

It’s like watching the Demigod release all over again.

Yep, it's pretty disapointing - never mind the actual product delivered.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Rock Paper Shotgun reposted some of Wardell's comments/apologies here:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010...d-controversy/

Apparently the Gamer's Bill of Rights situation is RPS couldn't find it on their website separate from the standalone website (which is maintained by Stardock). I don't know if it can't be found on the Stardock site (even a link to the standalone site) just because it's "old news", a link is broken, or if there is still a bit of a sinister/embarrassed attempt to keep people from looking at it too hard during the controversy.

[Martok]

On a lighter note, Brad posted the following this evening as he and his family were getting ready to go on vacation for a few days:

So here I am, minding my own business in my home computer room working on AI stuff for a future Elemental update when my wife comes in.


“Why aren’t you packed?” she asks.

“I’m packed,” I say, referring to my duffle bag with my iPad, laptop, and various computer books.

"We’re supposed to be leaving and all you have are gadgets and work books.”

“They’re not all work books.”

“Oh?” she asks. “Which of these isn’t?”

“Well, see ‘The Halls Below’, that’s not a computer book.” I respond.

“Isn’t a Penny Arcade book?” she demands.

“Well, sure, but it’s not a computer book.” I try to assure her.

“You’ve spent all afternoon and this evening on the computer instead of packing clothes, tooth brush, swimsuit, and other real people stuff?” she asks.

“Well, look, something came up.”

“Oh, tell me, husband.” she says.

“Well look at this, I can assassinate the AI’s sovereign with just a regular army.”

“So?”

This is where I, understandably, became shocked.

“So? So?!” I exclaim. “These are Channelers. Imbued by the Destiny to rebuild the world and I wiped one out with a bunch of guys with Lord hammers while my sovereignw as out on a quest. That’s an outrage.”

“Well there’s nothing you can do about that right now.”

“Ah, but I can! I wrote a function AIUnit::EvaluateAreaThreat(x,y,radius)! The guys have all these cool vectors where I can quickly determine what’s in an area quickly. It’s amazing stuff that I can use to make the AI wipe the floor with these bloody humans.” I explain.

“Vectors are just glorified arrays anyway,” my wife (CS major) says. “Besides, we are supposed to leave and we’re missing out on a beautiful full moon.”

“I saw it, you can tell it’s fake.”

“What? Fake? What are you talking about?” My wife says.

“It’s an uncanny valley thing. I saw the moon earlier. They rendered it wrong. There’s clearly two light sources.”

“ARE YOU INSANE? Who is ‘they’?” my wife demands.

“I dunno who exactly. I don’t want to get into a blame game here. The model seems right, I think it’s just a lighting issue.”

“GET. OFF. THE. COMPUTER. NOW.”


See you guys in a week or so.

Hee.


Whatever state the game is in currently, I take comfort in the fact that Brad was working on the game even during his supposed downtime....and was willing to risk the wrath of his wife in the process. Now that's stupidity dedication!

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

On a lighter note, Brad posted the following this evening as he and his family were getting ready to go on vacation for a few days:

Hee.

Whatever state the game is in currently, I take comfort in the fact that Brad was working on the game even during his supposed downtime....and was willing to risk the wrath of his wife in the process. Now that's stupidity dedication!

I may be a sucker for things like that (I would, for instance, be willing to kill and be killed for Valve) but that erased most of my (second hand) ill will towards the guy.

[Beskar]

I do have Elemental downloaded from Impulse, but I'm waiting for my boxed LE copy to arrive before I actually sit down and play it. (Barring something untoward happening, I believe I'll be getting it tomorrow.) Soon, very soon....

I have heard nothing at all about my copy, I am quite disappointed.

[Martok]

I may be a sucker for things like that (I would, for instance, be willing to kill and be killed for Valve) but that erased most of my (second hand) ill will towards the guy.

Yeah, Brad definitely has this....way about him. It's not always a good thing -- some of his recent comments are a testament to that -- but overall, I think it's an asset far more often than not.

He comes off as just a regular guy, flaws and all. He doesn't have any "a God am I" complex that some developers seem to have , and I think it's one of the big reasons I'm such a supporter of Stardock. He truly views himself as a gamer, and seems to identify with the customers at least as much as -- if not more than -- the "Industry" (if that makes any sense). Seriously, how many game company CEO's do we know of that post in the forums and hang out with the fans on a regular basis?

I have heard nothing at all about my copy, I am quite disappointed.

Yeah, my copy didn't arrive today either. Apparently they just shipped out on Tuesday, via express mail, and should arrive at their destinations within 3 days or thereabouts.

Of course, since you live across the Pond (correct?), I'm guessing your copy might take a little longer. On the other hand, I've no idea what the shipping time from the States to the UK is, so probably best not to quote me on that.

[Xiahou]

I got my Limited Edition today.

"Destiny's Embers" came in today too. Yeah, I got the book..... does that make me a fanboy?

If the AI's any good at all, I'm probably going to be in trouble once I meet one of the challenging level ones.

This was prophetic. Pariden has already wiped out one of my fellow empires and I just made contact with them. I tried to do some trading to build up some good will, but they declared war on me after a few turns. I'm in no condition to fight them, but so far they haven't showed much interest in actually destroying me either.

Let's hope they exhibit the same kind of neglect in conquering my empire that I did in growing it.

[Beskar]

I have trouble with scrolling across the map, which is awkward. I have to "guess" the direction it is, etc.

[Crandaeolon]

I asked for a refund and got it, very nice of them. I'll probably give the game another look once it has matured a bit, but right now the game is way too rough and unpolished.

[Xiahou]

I have trouble with scrolling across the map, which is awkward. I have to "guess" the direction it is, etc.

Can you use map text to orient yourself? (is it right side up, sideways, ect)

[Beskar]

I put a couple of squads on "auto-explore" and well, I am not sure where they are in relation to my town...

[Xiahou]

You mean you can't find them.... or what?

All your armies should have icons representing them down the left side of the screen that you can click on. And if you zoom out far enough, you can see the entire world at one glance on the cloth map.

[Veho Nex]

I cant get this game to load past the artwork it shows after you start a random map. Ive waited for 30 minutes one time. Its not freezing though... Its driving me off the deep end, and add my issues with wireless I just cant seem to get anything to work for me....

[Xiahou]

I cant get this game to load past the artwork it shows after you start a random map. Ive waited for 30 minutes one time. Its not freezing though... Its driving me off the deep end, and add my issues with wireless I just cant seem to get anything to work for me....

I'm starting to think I must be the luckiest guy on the planet when it comes to this game. Other than the slowdowns- mine gets down to 18FPS, which is still entirely playable for a TBS -I've had nary a problem.

I think I might not be ready for a large map epic game. After the last patch, I started a small map, normal paced game and I'm doing much better. Early on, I absorbed one of my fellow empires because they were sitting on lost libraries and other great resources that I just had to have. After that, Pariden started to get aggressive towards me once again and was hemming me in territorially. I managed to quickly capture their city that was hemming me in, kill many of their armies, and curse their best research city with ignorance. After that, I offered them very generous peace terms and they've essentially been my vassal since.

My next war was with yet another empire- Umber, when I decided to come to the aid of my new allies, Pariden. I took one of their cities(killing the sovereign's wife and daughter in the process) and intercepted their sovereign and his army when they were coming to retake it. I've still been researching heavily into magic and have a large force of summoned creatures and was able to kill their sovereign in the field, thus ending the Umber empire. My remaining opponents are the kingdoms of Pariden, Tarth, and Altair- the last of which I still have no contact with. Now I'm able to summon demonic troops, and frankly, it's hard to imagine how any of them could oppose me.

My first demon, about to set to work on some hapless bandits:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

My empire as it now stands:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Veho Nex]

Well I finally got the game running, only took me uninstalling and reinstalling then re-patching about 10 times. Hit a memory leak issue every 250 turns or so but from what ive read thats common. I havent delved too much into the magic section, been focusing on heavy hitting inf lately. I'll post some pictures from my game later.