Elemental gone gold - is it stable enough?

Don't worry, betas are always buggy (show me one that isn't and you get a cookie), and remember the sources of crashes has decreased dramatically with each version. This being said, the introduction of both the full game engine and subsequently tactical battles has introduced new bugs and such that the team has dealt with. The big culprit has been the memory leak, and if reports are correct (which I'm sure they are) this has been dealt with.

Have faith, and remember that betas are NOT demos, as much as we all wish they were. We're not here to sample a product, rather to refine a product's construction process. 

Stardock knows what they're doing, 

Paradoxical.

Frogboy reported that they'd caught the memory leak (with our help) and squashed the major stability bugs. We have his word on this so I think it's safe to say it'll be stable. The beta was probably intended to be unstable due to debug stuff and trying to discover errors/bugs.

Agreeing with Paradoxical, beta was not a demo. The intent was to correct errors, bugs, and problems. I think that it was successful too.

I am just a bit surprised of the "release cycle".

Why not to give us to test RC "with all the bugs fixed" before making it "gold"?

On the other hand I guess it's all depends on beta's "target". If beta was to test ideas, not the code, then I guess it's OK.

They've explained it time and time again... it's either August or next February because they can't get retail shelf space in the fall.

I suspect the game will be stable but I'm generally more concerned about the complete lack of any non internal balance, AI or general gameplay testing before release. If it were a first person shooter that would be one thing, but in a turn based 4x game, that's a pretty essential process. But I guess they can always fix things after release if necessary, and we could always choose to wait to buy the game until later if we don't think it's finished yet. Time will tell.

Sorry? what this has to do with release date? I am not care about it at all. Read my post please.

Btw: release dates posted in Dev. jornal if you interested.

Well I hope they pre-release the stable version before the retail version for us to check out... or are they saving that version as a surprise...

Frogboy already said that beta testers and preorders will most likely get to download earlier to reduce server impacts on release.

Look guys, the game compiled. If there are bugs, we assume the compiler should have caught them. That's what the compiler is for.

Now, none of us have had time to load the game or try it out but I'm sure it's fine.

lol. I'm pretty sure that's what they did with this title: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/bigrigsotrr/review.html

May I hire this "compiler" guy for my company ?

Hmm a couple comments here. I just found out about this game today...thanks to the email I recieved from stardock. I am greatly interested in it as it seems to be an updated version of masters of magic and several other games combined that I can think of. I have not played the game or been involved in the beta as I found out about it too late.

@paradoxical on beta stability: It is true that all betas have bugs etc....it has also been my experience that there is no great change between the end of a beta(last stage) and the first release version of a game. Therefore if a beta is really buggy and unstable I expect the first release version to also be very buggy and unstable. For this reason I never ever buy the argument relax its just the beta unless its early beta with plenty of time to fix the bugs. In the end I would rather have half of a really good game that is nearly bug free than all of a good game that is so riddled with bugs it never becomes playable. Where this game falls I have no idea as I have not played it and do not have access to the beta.

@frogboy : That is about the funniest statement I have read yet and I about died laughing.

Then our experience differs, and Stardock is reliable enough that they'll pump out a game that isn't buggy, being a part of the beta has shown how far Elemental has come. I'm not relaxing because it's a beta, I'm relaxing because it's Stardock. 

That is all, 

Paradoxical

they still haven't fixed that FOW bug in galciv2...

Yep, my experience with GalCiv/GalCiv2 is also not too encouraging.

But it's a new project, let's hope for the best.

game is going to seriously own. end of story.  i will never believe otherwise.

I'm one who wouldn't mind waiting longer for a more complete game.  I feel that Civ4 badly needed that time.  But I've no concerns about Elemental being anything short of a bargain of fun from the get go.  And from day one on, the game just gets better.  I've become a fan of Stardocks method of rewarding paying customers with a stream of new content and improvements; vs the old punish the players DRM.  I'm very much sold on Stardocks way of doing business.  I'll even be taking a look at the games they just publish but don't develop (Sins of a Solar Empire).  I also happen to respect Stardocks ability to create quality games.  And I trust their commitment to continue developing games post release.  I've no worries about Elemental... (lol, besides being able to actually buy it... one hit after another... get a little play money in the kitty and Wham! the septic system fails and I'm digging the new leech field by hand. Just the price of the rock has put my family in the hole again.  Arghhh!  So you might not be seeing me playing EWoM for awhile despite my excitement for it.)

Consider that each subsequent beta has been an order of magnitude better than the previous.  Consider the excellent products that Stardock has delivered time again.

Believe in the Frog.  He even runs a game company and everything!

  I am going to try this line on my boss later today.  

Depends on whether it's an actual beta test or a marketing exercise. Most public beta's are little more than marketing exercises designed to build up a core fanbase prior to actual release; kinda like what the demo was for in the days company's used to release them before the actual game. As a result you tend to be getting code which is pretty much the release candidate and only requires minor tweaking.

Actual beta's are rarely open to the public for the precise reason you describe; most devs don't want to risk sinking their game before it hits the shelves due to negative perception of the beta code, so it's far more common you select a small number of testers and slap a non-disclosure agreement on them to prevent any negative word of mouth leaking out prior to release.

The thing is that they haven't done the traditional closed beta either. It appears that all of their actual gameplay testing was purely internal and only done by a few employees. That's rather unusual for a game where things like balance and AI are so important.

It's also quite normal for the NDA to be released when the game is close to coming out because it looks extremely bad when it's not.

Eh just for the new guys that came after seeing the mailer that went out. You have no worries, I am not saying the game will be perfect (as all launches always  find something) but the issues we had in beta where the same issues we had with previous titles by these guys like Sins game. it as many should know comes with in beta a tracer , basicly a built in system that monitors the game constantly and records all issues. This sort of monitoration in a game will kill it's performance and cause allot of issues. Now don't let me lead you to think I am attempting to defend these guys as some blind fanboy. But (I know you have probably heard this a ton on the internet) I really am a developer , not here but elswhere and I can assure you that indeed these things are indeed true for companies like stardock.

I read above about some that feel.."well final beta is a good representation of the final game" and you would be correct, but by no means should you ever think it's how the performance will be at launch. Star Trek Online had horrible in game performance till launch day and even then it was touchy, it took them a month basicly to clear it all up. That is of course just an excample, but to the point. Stardock has made and does make awsome games for those that love the strategy genre, in the end thou and I bow to the comment that frog made awhile back...

"This is the game the way we want to make it, some will not like it and thats fine, they don't have to buy it. But as gamers we love it and know others will as well" and playing their beta even with all the memory issues etc, I know once the game is launched it will be exactly what I was expecting. The nice thing is , as with all their titles, they never stop working on them, we still get stuff for sins all the time and I look forward to elemental as well.

I hope it is stable when it comes out.

The final BETA was awesome except for the memory issue and the occassional slowness on my PC.

Really looking forward to seeing the final product and trying the campaign out.

Time to fire compiler?