Agreed. 

Exactly. It's obvious this is what is happening. 

Don't take wrong what I'm about to say but if you (all) truly believe that then: you shouldn't (as in suggestion, not order) be bothering coming back because you are in the road to (more) dissapointment. Unless you hit jackpot and Stardock happens to make improvements that you like.

You are obviously free to stay and all that but if you truly believe that, seems a waste of your precious life (no malice intended) to stay here. I mean it seriously and I apologize if someone truly believes that I'm crossing some kind of line about it. But these are not the developers you were looking for.

Glad to hear it Frogboy, I knew you wouldn't start a thread like this just to screw with us

 You miss the point. We are not saying SD listen to *my* super grandoise complicated idea for everything or you suck.

I mean how would that work? Everyone are posting super specific and detailed proposals which all conflict obviously.

But if you look through all the threads , while everyone disagrees on how to fix the game there is a very clear consensus on what is wrong at the high level.

Of course there is a lot of ways to solve each perceived problem, after all there are dozens of ways for the game to be playable.  

But SD will say they listen, and then they go ahead and do stuff that shows they totally don't get what players are saying is the problem (the recent 1dN thing is just a perfect case study).  

Here's the thing, some companies like Blizzard are pretty high handed, they have their own vision, they don't care what players think mostly, they trust their judgement and they don't even pretend to need feedback (at least not on such high level matters), and they do fine.

SD i suspect is actually like Blizzard, they think they know better, but are trying to score PR points for seeming to listen....After all many new comers here are still impressed by the "wow, the ceo is posting!"  trick,so this seeming to ask for feedback helps..

Given the bad PR they had lately, I can't blame them... 

Still as i said, they have more than enough feedback to last them for 5 games, i really wish they aren't actually reading everything and creating spreadsheets about each proposal.. that would be insane..

Just get a sense what players are unhappy with and try to fix that. I seriously dont expect them to go debate on which player's suggestion is best and go with that...

I seriously hope this is a joke... 

Why, because it doesn't fit with the narrative you're presenting?

Brad has told us before that usually he isn't that involved in the creation of the various sub parts of the game; he keeps the big picture in mind, reads the forums and considers how certain suggestions might affect the game. Part of what went wrong with Elemental is that he didn't do that. So are you now complaining that he is doing the thing that made his games successful in the past?

I'm assuming the reason you seem to be so upset is that you care about the game and are disappointed at the state in which it was released. I'm with you there, I've been following the development for nearly two years, and I'm just as disappointed that it just doesn't live up to expectations. I don't think you will find many people who think it does. We've had a month to complain about it, Stardock has owned up to it's mistakes and promised to make up for it. I'm not such a fanboy that I'll blindly believe the game will be perfect in 6 months, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt (especially since it won't cost me anything )

I'm not saying you shouldn't be critical or a little sceptical; those are good things that can keep the dev's from making the same mistakes again. But I sincerely doubt that b*tching about how they do their job every chance you get is even remotely helpful. In fact, it might discourage them from doing the very thing you want them to do; reading the forums. It certainly would for me.

Archers seem overpowered to the point of not being able to use them.

Unless that's because I'm playing a 1.07 game in 1.08?

Almost every shot that hits does maximum damage, and most shots hit.

You forgot the jedi hand wave.

My suggestions may have been suggested before here on this thread or another but its something I personally would like to see.

Instead of being able to build units just by researching them, instead make a building requirement also needed in that city for them to be built in that city.

IE... Barracks needed to be built in the city before you build a squad or experienced units. Wouldnt mind seeing a food requirement for the barracks either.

Throw in some other building requirements for the Veterans, Elites and Company sized units.

In line with that thought...

Merchant/market building in city required to open up the shop window.

Blacksmith building required in city to have metal weapons available for sale.

Arcane shop required for healing nectar and at least the Arcane Temple for magical items.

I hope you're writing down the criticism you didn't want to hear in beta and are considering that as well now.

It wasn't that Stardock didn't implement plenty of ideas during the beta, it was that you turned off all criticism and feedback from the beta community you didn't want to hear. You wanted to release, so you ignored the bug reports and people saying it wasn't ready.

This isn't me demanding that the game be exactly my way, I support mods for things that aren't as popular. But the game should in general be trying to appeal to its target audience, and not necessarily its target developers.

I don't think you're willing to take it from me, or even the other critics on the forums. So will you at least take it from some of the reviews about the game?

Such is the unhappy case with Elemental: War of Magic, the new 4X game from Brad Wardell. When playing it, experienced strategy fans will doubtless be able to feel the good ideas, the years of design experience, and the sense that the game is striving for that "just one more turn" addictiveness factor. Somewhere along the way, though, those intangible parts, excellent as they are, turn into a terribly flawed reality -- one rife with bugs, burdened by an awful GUI and less user-friendliness than the One Ring, and wielding graphics that would look right at home in a Dire Straits video.

 

This game has NEVER suffered a shortage of good ideas and I don't see that more of them are a solution to the failures to implement them in the past. The idea you really need are the original core concepts for the game (particularly the ones based on its "lore") and the game description on the box. How well are you implementing those? What popular mechanics would implement it better?

I have to laugh at this, if you are that jaded and think all these things you have posted as a reality then why stay?  I mean most people would give up on people if they thought all this.  I think if we keep dwelling on mistakes from the past we will never move forward, and posts like yours is only making matters worse.

I suspect because unlike a lot of people attacking others on these forums he can still be both a critic and a fan.

and I disagree about the other part as well, if we don't learn from the past then you are doomed to repeat it. If Frogboy has a good QA department then they should be talking to him about Corrective Action still at this point to prevent the disasters of Elemental's launch in the future and help to fix the current game.

calling people liars is not being a critic.

Also, stating the same things in your multiple posts is not constructive, it gets to the point of being distructive.  Every time they post something a comment you didn't listen to us last time is not helpful.

Feel free to post it as it is your right, don't feel attacked if  it is someones perception of what is going on.

I have been reading the posts here for about a week now.... and the prrimary suggestion I have for the developers is to create a

USER CUSTIMIZING PAGE:  allow user to personalize MANY options in world about to be 'created'

which soverign abilities, etc, will be avaliable, and at what cost.

what spells will be available and/or  'unlockable' as game progresses, and cost of each specific spell.

cost of units, cost of equipment...

number of resources, types, etc. 

If many of these things were accessable, and modifiable by user just prior to a world creation, many of the 'concerns' posted in these forums would be addressed without constantly going in and rewriting the code.   For example, many posts about cost of teleport spell, and removal of 'organized' soverign ability.  Allow the coast of casting the spell to be selected from a range of, say, 5 - 20.   etc.  Let us playerd make choices about the world we intend to play in...  (or leave it at defaults, or hit a "randomize' button.

Sigh you still miss the point. You keep thinking I'm someone who is unhappy because they don't follow my super detailed idea (check the forums , I seldom do that)

I already said, looking at every single idea doing a spreadsheet would be a disaster. There are hundreds of ideas here, as someone already mentioned Elemental doesn't suffer from the lack of good ideas, there are dozens of threads where Brad asked for ideas from spell ideas to global pool to .... You act like this is the first time he asked for them...

Did that prevent the disaster the game is? 

In fact, I'm really hoping this is just a PR stunt, that they are paying lip service to this thread, they already know what is wrong and 99% know what to do.

I mean Brad is supposed to be the CEO that reads and responds to posts right? That's one of the reasons why he is so beloved. You mean it was a lie , and only *NOW* he is looking closely to the extent he is doing spreadsheets and stuff? That he suddenly desperately wants user input? 

Anyway if by now, 2 months into release, 1 year into beta  if they still have no idea what they did wrong with EWOM and by this point they still need to do these feedback threads and watch everything so closely as he seems to be implying, the game is doomed, and they really have no clue what they are doing..

Honestly I don't think they are that humble, so I'm betting they already decided what they want to do to fix the game, and pretty much are ignoring the forum at least in terms of new ideas (good idea to look at feedback to the existing game though), and I'm okay with that as long as they really understand what is wrong. What I don't like is this pretend humility which fools no-ones except fanboys or new people who go "You should really start a thread to post spell ideas"... which btw Brad already did and people obliging did...not that it helped.

Ideas are dime a dozen, everyone knows that, I seriously don't think SD is suddenly so desperate for new ideas despite all the public show of humility and all that. It's a PR exercise pure and simple, and you know what? I'm fine with that as long as they fix the game, I just don't like to pretend.

Nonsense, Galciv2 was mostly made without much user input and they stuck to their guns no matter what players said about the combat being bland etc. Yes, some changes were made to address hacks, but by and large the game mechanics was created by SD despite what players might say or want. And in that case, they did okay. The whole.. CEO listens and responds to posts always struck me mostly as a PR stunt,  always has being. Only this time they are trying harder to play up this part , because the game released was a mess.

 I don't believe it's helpful to follow the thread so closely as Brad is implying but some fans probably think it is a good idea, and that remark was probably addressed to them, but it's not helpful because it gives them false hope. 

So *this* time he's serious about listening, all the other times he was screwing with us? 

Honestly.. It's not only SD that does this, lots of other developers do this, they always think they know better about what makes a good game (anyone can go on and on about some system they dreamed up), and you know what? Most of the time they are right.

Lying is such a dirty word.. let's say someone is shading the truth a little with a bit of misdirection on how closely they are following the thread..

Personally I don't feel attacked, I can't speak for anyone else though.

Let me address this because I've seen it come up time and time again.

The issue isn't that we don't listen to people or users. When designing a piece of software you have Scope. Time. Cost.

Let's look at what I do on Stardock's games. Think of me as "super modder". I don't write the core systems. I make use of them to do things like make AI or create game mechanics and such. 

So at the start, you have a design document that walks through every element of the game top to bottom.  Now, if you have an engine already (like Galactic Civilizations II did) then you just proceed forward and all things end up fine.

But Elemental: War of Magic was having its engine developed in tandem. So as time went on, I would find that a certain feature I wanted to put in or that users wanted to put in was something that the engine didn't support and wouldn't support for a long while so I'd have to come up with a different way to try to accomplish the same thing.

So users on the forums would say "You should have feature X" in there. I might agree or not but in each case, I'm looking at what can be supported by the engine today as well as looking at what could be supported by the engine in the near future.

In software development, these are things that you have to deal with all the time, it's not unique to Elemental except that some of the design decisions didn't work as we had hoped.

Luketan, we are painfully aware of the criticisms of the game.  As someone who has been making games for almost 20 years, I have had some good ideas and some bad ideas (same on our non-game software). 

Elemental's game mechanics fail due to the interworkings between the unit system, the combat system, and the magic system.  They don't need to be redone as much as integrated into a cohesive whole.

We have our own ideas how to address this but I will go through the forums and look at people's ideas and other observations to see if there might be a better way.

For instance, there was a discussion in one of the threads on tactical battles and how magic should work.  From that, we came up with a new design that has a casting time for spells. The player will be able to see what units and actions are coming up in a kind of "film strip" at the top of the screen. Thus, if a player is casting "Rock Slide" on them, they will likely have time to react.

Giving spells a casting time changes a lot of game mechanics and by looking at feedback from the forums, we can refine things further by hearing other players with their experiences. We don't develop our games by "community consensus" but we do listen to ideas to see if there's something we like better than what we came up with.

The same with combat.  Splitting the "To Hit" and "Damage" rolls allows us to make a much more satisfying system.

Anyway, the point is, we looked through the forums during the beta and made a great deal of changes based on feedback and suggestions (the concept of global food and other resources came from the beta for instance, the research system we have in the game came from the forums).  Many users tend to think that if THEIR idea doesn't get used then we clearly aren't listening.  Sometimes, we either don't agree with an idea or it's something beyond our scope to implement.

Right now, there is one main issue that is bothering me: the power of the single stack of death. While it is not as extreme as in the HoMM series, it is way too effective to pool as much of your army as possible into one stack.

unit stacks are not a bad thing, they are even necessary for interesting tactical combat, but the power of single (or double) stack tactics kills several strategic elements:

1) It is useless to put small garrisons in your cities. Due to tactical combat, n small stacks are way inferior than a single big stack, so you might as well leave them undefended and build up your own stack of death. It is often said that the Teleport spell is responsible for this kind of play, but actually, it only gives you the possibility to defend against stacks of death. If there was no teleport spell, I would still not put a few defenders in my cities. I would be overrun a lot, but spreading my line of defenders thin is not going to help me prevent this.

2) Invading another faction is very straightforward and not strategic. You rush forward, conquer all cities in your way (if you are lucky, they are defended a bit, giving you the opportunity to kill a lot of your opponents forces without much risk) without ever having to stop, and at some point during the invasion, there is a decisive battle (unless the opponent spread all his forces evenly across his cities). There is no need for sieges or the nice strategic spells for crippling enemies cities before (unless the opponent puts his stack into a city, but then you would simply take all other cities until he leaves the city so you can engage him outside. I did not have this situation come up so far) which is sad, since i personally love drawn out conflicts for a crucial city

In my opinion, there are several ways to "fix" this issue

1) make unit production way cheaper and "max out" easier so you will not be able to pool all your forces in one single stack. It is a simple solution which would solve some other problems, but also create some.

2) Give fights a time limit, i.e. after for example 10 Turns (could also depend on the sieged city or some technology research), the battle ends in a draw. Therefore, the attacker usually needs several turns to wear down the weaker defenders, giving the defender the opportunity to send in reinforcements before the damage is done. That way, it would actually make sense to spread your forces across several border cities, since they can hold of the attacker long enough for you to reinforce the attacked city (without teleport) and probably even give you an opportunity to counterattack the enemy's cities while the single stack of death is busy with your defenders, forcing him to defend his cities.

This approach would make big stacks of death still powerful, especially if the opponent made some strategic mistakes, but not the only feasible approach, and not always the best one.

Yeah, I'll give you credit for using lots of ideas and not listening to community consensus. In some ways you adopted too many ideas and lost track of your own original vision for the game and chasing after disparate ideas in my opinion is why the game no longer is a cohesive whole like it was in the beginning. Many of the ideas could have been adopted in a way that fit the whole, but they weren't. If you HAD listened to the beta tester's community consensus you wouldn't have launched at the time you did. I'll take your word that you adopted the global economy as a community idea (though not from the housing thread you've often used as an excuse ) but it wasn't consensus that got there. The problems you're now facing (unbalanced economy, city spamming, cities being identical more RPG than Strategy game) are a direct result of avoiding the consensus. Same thing with tactical battles (though admittedly an aspect I was less involved in as I curtailed my beta involvement after the treatment of the beta community involving the global economy).

I've been a partner in my own company before and I know that one enjoy's the feeling of power and entitlement that comes with the position of making the decisions yourself. Also that you tend to trust the people you work with. But a successful product or a "quality" product always comes from giving your customer what they want. Quality IS Customer Satisfaction, because the perception of its quality is only a measure of how satisfied people are with it.

one idea that i had was to implement corruption.  basically, the more cities you create the higher your corruption would become, and as a result it would LOWER your influence across the board.  of course you could eliminate this corruption by putting buildings in your towns that were expensive with upkeep, but it might be worth it if you could reach out to that elemental shard, or 2 old growth forests.  what do you think?

I'm reassured by Brad's answer. 

Economic Theory for phase A/B

Nutshell: Have resource tiles offset city upkeep

Premise:

In a post-cataclysm economy the people have been scattered. To gather them together again under the banner of a Sovereign takes more than just personal power, but a promise of a more comfortable life and a shared vision of purpose. This is part of why Food, right now, is the basic cornerstone of Elemental's economy. Without Food you can't support groups of people beyond 10 in any sort of way that will allow a functioning socity. And because Food/Shelter is the most basic of human needs, that is why it not only provides the hard cap on how much Housing you can build but also why it is the driving force behind Gold-related buildings; the foundation of this post-cataclysm Economy is Food, not other goods or services.

As a settlement gathers the survivors to it, not only do the consume the Food but they also begin to look for purpose. Nearby Old Growth Forests, Iron Ores, Shards, etc. provide further reason to stick with the settlement as they guarantee jobs and the promise of security from the Sovereign. The value of these strategic resources makes the people who work and live at the settlement more willing to sacrifice some of their own earnings, which can translate to a reduction in the upkeep costs of buildings in that settlement.

Mechanics:

So, if you give every strategic resource other than Food (and possibly Gold Mines) an "Upkeep Offset" rating of some sort, it provides further incentive to include these resources in your Kingdom/Empire and further disincentive to build cities that have 0 strategic resources available. Having a city with many strategic resources allows a lot of construction with minimal upkeep, leading to more profit for the player and then the choice of using that profit for the development of units/heroes, or to support cities that have no resources.

Something as simple as the resource offsets upkeep equal to the number of X it provides (so an Old Growth Forest, providing 2 materials, offsets 2 city upkeep) would be a good place to start.

Summary:

I think this helps address the "dammit I don't like the extra upkeep you added!" people as well as adding more factors to consider in the pros/cons of city spamming.

Frogboy, I hope you are still reading this thread.  Also thanks for the continued updates and patches.  I am enjoying Elemental immensely.

I am not programmer by any stretch so I am going to list some suggestions that I think would be good for “B”.  If they can be worked into “A”, great; if they have to wait for “C”, that’s fine as well.  If I am way off base, than I appreciate your time and reading my suggestions.  I still enjoy the game.  I know there is a large call for game “balancing”, my suggestion would to not worry about it.

1.        Magic—many more spells.  Battle field summons, battle field enchantments (both positive for my side, and negative for who I am fighting), World enchantments (again positive and negative).

2.       When designing a Sovereign, the ability to specialize in specific elements.  Have three points in earth magic  so I learn them faster and they do more damage, last longer, etc.

3.       Race and faction specific units and buildings.  I really like the world achievements, but a couple buildings and units that are race and faction specific would be great.  Distinction between the races.

4.       Personality for the AI sovereign.  Have them behave a certain way.  I mentioned in another thread.  Have a Sovereign that just wants to build their kingdom, they will defend, but all in all just want to build their kingdom.  Have another one that wants one city and then just wants to conquer everybody else.  It would be great to be able to assign the behaviors or just select random.

5.       Sliders on start up screen controlling how many shards, resources, etc. are in the world.  I want to play a game where the world is just devastated and there is nothing around.

6.       Somehow fix the city settlements.  There are way too many cities in my opinion.  I suggested on a thread that it costs three food or so to establish a city.  It fits with the game concept.

7.       I guess the last would be more weapons and armor types.  Perhaps a feature where we could design our own and imbue magic properties in them.