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A little worried about some of the articles coming out...

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A little worried about some of the articles coming out...

from Elemental Forums

I know these forums are inhabited by even the most hardened of Stardock fans, and i am one too. But if you love something you can't be blind to criticize it. Already we have a thread saying don't complain so I know how this thread will turn out but i'm really hoping for an actual dialogue that won't be met with rampant fanboyism.

 

Anyway I just read this article and while I know there is a zero day patch coming, i'm a little worried about exactly HOW much they fixed in such a short amount of time. It seems like there are a lot of bugs/typos/mistakes and I think as a paying customer it's okay to say this.

A note from Frogboy on this

Hi guys, 

Let me add some points here:

1. Tom Chick is one of the top gaming journalists in the industry.  He's not just some guy.

2. He is reviewing the gold version (he is NOT playing the day 0 version). I.e. He is NOT playing a beta.

3. While I would quibble with some of the content (yes, we multiply bonuses. We multiplied them in Entrepreneur, we multiplied them in GalCiv, and we multiply them in Elemental and have throughout the beta).

4. I agree with Tom that the Hiergamenon page should make it more clear that those bonuses are being multiplied and that there is a text bug in the description of Educated that was since addressed.

5. The math system under the hood does work as designed, even in the gold version. It's not buggy but I think Tom brings up a valid point that the way it is explained to the player needs work (I think Tom would also agree it's light years ahead of how we "explained" the math in GalCiv II which was, essentially we didn't).

6. This isn't a review, it's a diary.  Please read Tom's other works.  It doesn't mean he hates the game. He is pointing things out that he thinks can be improved in the game and we can all benefit from it.

 

 

 

Anyway here is the article and some snippets:

 

http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/08/elemental_in_a_world_of_dragon.php

 

I'm trying to like Elemental. I really am. But the version I have now, and the version you're probably going to get to start playing tomorrow if you pre-ordered, is in pretty sad shape. A patch should be available by Monday. I hope it's a big patch.

My problem isn't just the way Elemental assumes you know things you would have no way of knowing, or the amateurish mistakes in the interface, or the crashes, or how alt-tabbing kills the game, or the way the Farming Guild increases metal production by 100%, or that I didn't get the leather armor I was promised when I researched it, or even this picture of the dreaded Umberdroth Pack, which either has cloaking technology or is so skinny it can hide behind a palm tree.

Elemental_GD_01_palms.jpg

Actually, maybe the Umberdroth Pack is the palm trees. I suppose there's no reason you can't have a tropical ent.

All those things are frustrating enough. But I'm a bit worried that I simply can't trust the game to do what it says it's doing.


All I ask is for you guys to just read this and not to flip out on me for criticizing or worrying about the game or wondering exactly HOW much this zero-day patch is going to fix.

elemental
291,853 views 145 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

For those who do not know who Tom Chick is:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tom_Chick

 

In short he is a professional reviewer who doesn't seem to be afraid to state if he doesn't like something.

He endorsed elemental (a little ) before:

http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/08/civilization_v_hates_your_old.php

http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/02/civilization_v.php

 

I kind of like his webpage, because he is very frank. If he really likes something, he says so - and no, this is not a ranting-only webpage. He also seems to be fond of independent game developers, oftentimes presenting newly released indie games. That being said, many times I do not agree with his opinion. And his best known review is probably the one of Deus Ex (published in print), which he hated a lot.

So, I wouldn't worry. Given that the game diary posted above already announces another post on Elemental ('Up next: haven't we met before?') I am curious to see what is coming. But even if he hates it, I don't. So far Elemental seems excellent. If he has a different opinion, it does not matter to me. And given who he is and where he posted, I am not sure his opinion would have a high impact on sales either.

 

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

So... the review is based on a Beta build? Without mentioning that it's based on a Beta build?

I suppose that the game will have its... "features" in Gold version but hopefully not many. And Day 0 patch should be great.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Wintersong, reply 27
So... the review is based on a Beta build? Without mentioning that it's based on a Beta build?

I suppose that the game will have its... "features" in Gold version but hopefully not many. And Day 0 patch should be great.

 

Not sure if it is the Beta. He is a professional, so my guess is he got the gold release.

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

Despite I almost never write in the forums, I am a big Stardock fan since GalCiv2. And if I am not worried is because of the GalCiv2 experience. I think it's safe to assume that Elemental will grow and improbe like GalCiv2. So even if the reviewer is right, I am confident that patches (I mean, early patches. No patches that will take months to be developed) will solve it soon.

Stardock is not like Ubi, that took 2 years to make HOMMV playable in the LAST patch. I am sure Elemental will be a great game right from the start. Maybe with some flaws, but they will no doubt get solved pretty soon.

Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting <span>GroWi</span>, reply 28



Quoting Wintersong,
reply 27
So... the review is based on a Beta build? Without mentioning that it's based on a Beta build?

I suppose that the game will have its... "features" in Gold version but hopefully not many. And Day 0 patch should be great.


 

Not sure if it is the Beta. He is a professional, so my guess is he got the gold release.

He mentions the patch and specifically says he hopes it's a big one which implies that he feels there are significant flaws in the version he has which might be the actual release version. Keep in mind, the math problem, although the focus of this diary posting, is not the only flaw he talks about.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

The unfortunate thing is that if all of the initial reviews slam the game, it's a gigantic detriment to the entire community. Less people buying means less people modding, and we as a community will have to do a lot of work doing word of mouth to get people in after Stardock patches things up. If Gold is as buggy as this guy says (the 100% bonus to metal production from a farm seems suspicious!) then I hope we'll be able to convince sites to do re-reviews later ;P

I admit I'm a bit worried, too. I'll reserve final judgement until I play, and final-final judgement until day 0.

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting OliverFA, reply 29
Despite I almost never write in the forums, I am a big Stardock fan since GalCiv2. And if I am not worried is because of the GalCiv2 experience. I think it's safe to assume that Elemental will grow and improbe like GalCiv2. So even if the reviewer is right, I am confident that patches (I mean, early patches. No patches that will take months to be developed) will solve it soon.

Stardock is not like Ubi, that took 2 years to make HOMMV playable in the LAST patch. I am sure Elemental will be a great game right from the start. Maybe with some flaws, but they will no doubt get solved pretty soon.

 

While having dedicated developers that stick to their product is awesome, it does have some drawbacks. Reviews will be less than stellar and it will take a while to have the game that most of us wants. Stardocks seems to be a company, whose games sell mostly due to word of mouth, because once this game reaches it potential, it will be gone from the media spotlight, which I feel is too bad. The game does have a lot of potential, and will probably be great out of the box, but relying on patches to finish the game does worry me a bit.

Reply #33 from Stardock Forums Top


I know these forums are inhabited by even the most hardened of Stardock fans, and i am one too. But if you love something you can't be blind to criticize it. Already we have a thread saying don't complain so I know how this thread will turn out but i'm really hoping for an actual dialogue that won't be met with rampant fanboyism.

 

Anyway I just read this article and while I know there is a zero day patch coming, i'm a little worried about exactly HOW much they fixed in such a short amount of time. It seems like there are a lot of bugs/typos/mistakes and I think as a paying customer it's okay to say this.

 

Anyway here is the article and some snippets:

 


http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/08/elemental_in_a_world_of_dragon.php

 

I'm trying to like Elemental. I really am. But the version I have now, and the version you're probably going to get to start playing tomorrow if you pre-ordered, is in pretty sad shape. A patch should be available by Monday. I hope it's a big patch.

My problem isn't just the way Elemental assumes you know things you would have no way of knowing, or the amateurish mistakes in the interface, or the crashes, or how alt-tabbing kills the game, or the way the Farming Guild increases metal production by 100%, or that I didn't get the leather armor I was promised when I researched it, or even this picture of the dreaded Umberdroth Pack, which either has cloaking technology or is so skinny it can hide behind a palm tree.



Actually, maybe the Umberdroth Pack is the palm trees. I suppose there's no reason you can't have a tropical ent.

All those things are frustrating enough. But I'm a bit worried that I simply can't trust the game to do what it says it's doing.

After the jump, is Elemental lying to me? Hey, look, a dragon!

It's immediately apparent that Elemental not only looks great, but it has some fantastic ideas. The tech tree, for instance, and the way the map is constantly offering you little goodies. When Elemental developer Stardock made the Galactic Civilization games, they were stuck with mostly boring outer space. You can't do much with space. Nebulas, I guess. Asteroid fields. The occasional black hole. And that's about it. Space in inherently boring until you start peppering it with late-game space stations.

But a fantasy world is a whole other matter. Fantasy worlds can be full of cool stuff from the get-go. Elemental knows this. For example, the Cthulhu Dragon I met and gave a wide berth. He's in the screenshot up top. Here he is when he's angry:

 

Elemental's random maps are full of landmarks, resources, wandering critters, and adventure locations, often appearing as a result of your research. For instance, in the process of allocating research to discover cool things in the world, I discovered a Lost Library south of my empire. Lost Libraries provide 5 points of "Research", or "Worldly Knowledge", or "Tech Research", as it's variously called at different places in the game.

So I built an outlying city to take advantage of the Lost Library. The vowel-heavy random name generator decided to call my city Orooplor. I built a school in Orooplor to add a 25% bonus to research. Furthermore, my empire has the trait "Educated", which adds an additional 10% bonus to research. So every turn, Orooplor should be earning me -- quick math in my head* -- 6.8 points of research (Elemental tracks numbers to tenths of a point or a hundredth of a point, depending on where you look).

Of course, I shouldn't have to keep track of this. That's why there's a detailed city screen. I can click on it to see my 6.8 points of research coming in every turn. Like so (you can click on these images for a clearer blown-up look):



Oh, wait, the 6.8 points are instead 9.4 points. Silly me. I must have overlooked something. Let's click on the 9.4 and check the helpfully provided details of the detailed city screen:



Firstly, I see that I have a 50% bonus to research. This is actually present at all of my cities, so I guess my empire is five times more Educated than I thought. But even that doesn't account for the 9.4. If being Educated adds 50% instead of 10%, I should be getting 8.8 points of research. But I see now that my error is mistakenly assuming that Elemental can do math. It has somehow decided that 50% + 25% = 88%. Which it has then applied twice over to the Lost Library's 5 research points for a grand total of 17.6 points of research. Thanks, Elemental.


I don't mean to harp on this, but it's not an isolated instance of some weird under-the-hood bug. In its current state, Elemental is packed with these kinds of headscratchers. And my suspicion is that for every one of them I can see, there are even more lurking under the hood. There's no small amount of trust involved in playing a strategy game and letting the computer handle so many of the numbers. And when that trust is violated, it's incredibly discouraging. If I can't trust the game to do what it's saying it will do, I might as well go play Victoria 2.

 

All I ask is for you guys to just read this and not to flip out on me for criticizing or worrying about the game or wondering exactly HOW much this zero-day patch is going to fix.

Lol.

"It seems like there are a lot of bugs/typos/mistakes and I think as a paying customer it's okay to say this."

okay... :P so what about his review sentence below.

"Space in inherently boring until you start peppering it with late-game space stations."

Amateurish mistakes eh?

I'm sure there's more he made, that made me laugh. Aside from the whole review of a non release version *cough* it does say BETA 4 :P

Reply #34 from Elemental Forums Top

Erm, it's not a review, it's a diary :) Let's wait for actual players' opinions. I value them more than any review.

Reply #35 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Savyg, reply 5

Tom Chick is my favorite writer.  He is definately not full of shit.

 

He panned Deus Ex. Ever since then I've thought of him more as a commentator; he sometimes has interesting ideas, but I trust his taste in games about as far as I could throw Jabba the Hut on a high gravity planet with one arm tied behind my head.

Reply #36 from Elemental Forums Top

anyone who gives Deus Ex a sub 50% score on a review, shouldnt be in the business of reviewing games.

Reply #37 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tegga21, reply 33

"It seems like there are a lot of bugs/typos/mistakes and I think as a paying customer it's okay to say this."

okay... so what about his review sentence below.

"Space in inherently boring until you start peppering it with late-game space stations."

Amateurish mistakes eh?

I'm sure there's more he made, that made me laugh. Aside from the whole review of a non release version *cough* it does say BETA 4

First of all you're not paying him to write you a review - you're reading it for free. And yes, while typos in any material are never good they are hardly comparable in this situation.

We also have no idea what version he is playing. I can't remember exactly what beta 4 looked like, but I'm guessing hes probably reviewing beta 5 or the gold version.

Reply #38 from Elemental Forums Top

Who really cares how a game adds or multiples its bonus's and what have you. Complaining about it is like going to ball game and complaining about the pitch. Sure it might be a little different than what your used to, but the opponent has play on that pitch too, the game is not lost because of the pitch. More so by a inflexible bad attitude to adapting to different pitches, so to speak.

I wouldn't read too much into this review, seems to me all it complains about is how things are calculated.  

Reply #39 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting SuperZERO0, reply 38
Who really cares how a game adds or multiples its bonus's and what have you. Complaining about it is like going to ball game and complaining about the pitch. Sure it might be a little different than what your used to, but the opponent has play on that pitch too, the game is not lost because of the pitch. More so by a inflexible bad attitude to adapting to different pitches, so to speak.

I wouldn't read too much into this review, seems to me all it complains about is how things are calculated.  

Your metaphor is poorly thought out. A more accurate one would be: going to a baseball game only to find the rules have been changed to something that you cannot fully understand.

Games are based on rules - if players do not understand the underlining rules then not only will they not be able to enjoy the game, but they'll fail to take advantage of it as well.

Reply #40 from Stardock Forums Top

I don't think this qualifies as a review.  Tom usually posts mutliple times about a game.

Look at the Game Diaries category.  Look how many posts there are about Starcraft 2.  I'm sure there'll be more about Elemental as well.

Reply #41 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting StevenAus, reply 13
Why are people reviewing a version of the game *before the game's actual release date*?   Seems like an awful load of assumptions that are being made in that review, and the reviewer is not being upfront about them.  So what about cumulative percentages rather than CivIV's way of doing things which is +20% + 20% equals +40%?  If you want to be picky, then CivIV's way of doing percentages is non-standard, *not* Elemental's.

Best regards,
Steven. 

Reviewers always do that. They get copies of the game sent out before release to do reviews, otherwise you wouldn't have any reviews out until a week after release. Usually games are in a ready for release state before release day, so it's not a big deal.

And Civ's way of doing things IS standard across most games. Multiplicative bonuses lead to odd things, how do you apply a -20% modifier? You certainly can't just stick -0.2 in the calculation, because the results will make absolutely no sense. Multiplicative bonuses also lead to some of the problems we saw in beta 4, where at one point early in the game food is scarce and then you start stacking bonuses and the scaling explodes to such a degree that food becomes near infinite.

Multiplicative bonuses lead to a situation where with a base of 5, a 20% bonus at one point in the game is weaker then a 20% bonus at another point in the game, with the same base value.

Reply #42 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Raven, reply 7
Some of the comments on that page are...dissheartening. Here's an interesting quote...Don't shoot the messenger here guys, I'm just quoting what I'm seeing:

"snits on August 22nd 2010 2:49am


Whatever happened to we shall ship no game before it's time. Between this and their publishing of Demigod, they apparently have some serious QA team issues to resolve."
 
That's not good, not good at all. Who was the writer of that "Review" anyway? Is that an actual review site or some dudes random blog? I wouldn't think some random blogger would have access to the game this early and would of had to have based that on the Beta or something, in which case that explains the number errors as most of the values for things in Beta 4 were place holders. Either way, I'm GREATLY looking forward to tomorrow. I'll be changing just about every value the game has for modding anyway, so, I'll be doing my own math...lol.
 

Well realistically, look at how much stuff was outright cut from multiplayer to make the release date. "Release when its ready" depends on the relative term "ready".

I will say that Stardock's estimates for how long it'd take to do this were always aggressive. When they say it only takes 5% of development time to actually make the game, he's forgetting the years of work they put in after release to turn something like GalCiv 2 from what it was at release into a good game.

Most game developers put more of that effort up front and less of it on the back end. A friend of mine who works at Bethesda was simply baffled that they were thinking of releasing only a month after beta 4, given how much work and polish that needed.

Reply #43 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Othello, reply 2
And after all, aren't all reviewers full of s*** anyway?

- Othello

Only when you don't agree with them. ;)

Reply #44 from Elemental Forums Top

the multipliers being literally multiplied together instead of added is counter-intuitive.

I wouldn't say that myself.  If you got a 5% salary increase this year would you expect it to be 5% of last year's salary or 5% of the first year you worked for your employer?

+2 Loading…
Reply #45 from Elemental Forums Top

There is a lot of hate for early galciv2. Having played galciv2 since release, I will say that it was a fine 4x game at the time, which was playable from beginning to end. Any one here play Master of Orion 2? The qa testers at microprose didn't even know they could make undefeatable ships ever. I worked with the qa manager for that game years later and he still had no idea. Comparing a 4x game to any other type of game is unfair to both games. The size and scale of a randomly create game experience makes testing a nightmare, and finding exploits nigh impossible until given the scrutiny of the general public. If the average player can load up and play a whole game without ever believing the game has significant bugs, then mission accomplished. Not every game has to undertake a 5 year development cycle with over a year of play balance a la any blizzard game.

Quoting Adronson, reply 45

the multipliers being literally multiplied together instead of added is counter-intuitive.
I wouldn't say that myself.  If you got a 5% salary increase this year would you expect it to be 5% of last year's salary or 5% of the first year you worked for your employer?

Amen.

Reply #46 from Stardock Forums Top

Solidsmooky, would you be so kind as to not cut and paste the entirety of my article?  You're of course welcome to link to it and even quote excerpts, but it's uncool to reprint an entire article like that.

As others have pointed out, this is the beginning of a week-long series about the game.  I'm particularly looking forward to seeing how it turns out after the first patch, because it desperately needs it. :(

 

    -Tom

Reply #47 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, I get now why different bonuses are not added cumulatively, but all are added and just one multiplication is done.  It's a lot easier and doesn't result in interest on interest.

You could argue that it's not "ready" in everyone's opinion, hey, I worried about that too.  But in the end different companies run in different ways and while you can influence it a little, when there's only two times in the one year that an indie release like Elemental can be made, it is hard to make a call what happens if you need a lot less extra time than the full difference in time (between August and February if I recall correctly), but a little more time (ideally) than what you've got.  It's a judgement call either way, so I think I'm satisfied in saying I'll just wait and see how it pans out.  But I'll still play (and enjoy) Elemental regardless. ^_^ :D

Best regards,
Steven.

Reply #48 from Elemental Forums Top

Percentage bonuses should only apply to the base resource, not compounded through multiplication. If you multiply then you are applying a bonus to the bonus which isn't right.

Referring to a salary isn't a good analogy because when you get a bonus one year the base resource (your wage) is changed and the next year the new figure is the base resource (compounding). In this case we are talking about base resources that don't change over time so the bonuses should only apply to the base resource, not the other bonuses as well.

Reply #49 from Elemental Forums Top

Post edited to show just an excerpt, please visit the site to read all of it. ;)

Reply #50 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Storm, reply 44

Sounds to me like he is just trying to be controversial for publicity.

Not really. He criticised the AI, complained the immersion was regularly broken and the story was fairly boring. None of which are particularly controversial, it just seems his sum total of the game differed from everyone else's.

Which tends to be the problem I have with his reviews; he focuses too much on the individual parts and misses the sum of those parts, or at least his sum tends to differ from mine.