God I find that last comment obnoxious.

You learned the wrong lesson from WOM.  If you think WOM would have been a great game had we just thrown in more forum goer ideas you are mistaken. A lot of what was wrong with the WOM design was because its design, which started out as basically MOM, slowly mutated based on endlessly throwing in user ideas to the point that the underlying engine wasn't able to handle anything particularly well.  

How do you think we got quests and dynasties and multi-tile cities in the first place? Those were user requests.

As a reminder: Here's an image from the original design document for Elemental:

What does that look like?

Take that start and start adding fan suggestions without a disciplined design or development process and you get WOM.  So that I'm clear here, WOM didn't live up to its potential because Stardock's games unit didn't have a proper software development process.  But the design of the game itself was the result of me wanting MOM plus me and the team slowly adding more fan requests into the design.

Sure, they may not have been your requests but the story of WOM's design wasn't Stardock didn't listen.

With FE, we have a fantastic game designer on hand to create an amazing game - Kael.  And as if that's not enough, he's able to bounce ideas off of Jon Shafer whose office is next door and then get daily feedback from me.  

The development for FE has the best of both worlds: A proper development process + the GalCiv II development team (who were working on Impulse during WOM).

My point is, we're not using the community as an ad-hoc design committee. The beta has been very successful so far because we've been able to get feedback on balance, stability, and weaknesses in the current design and evaluate ways to improve the game design that we already have.

I agree with Brad.  As much as I throw out ideas and complaints, I would prefer Stardock take all of our ideas with a grain of salt.  Simply because as fabulous as I think my ideas are, I think some of your ideas are terrible.  But, I also know that from a third party perspective, all our ideas(mine too) are probably only marginally helpful at best, and obnoxiously worthless at worst.  But, things to listen to the forum crowd are things that Brad listed are bugs, balance, and UI problems.

Delete

I do perfer that original design picture over the current art style that you guys are using for both games. But that is an old argument and I am liking the game play of FE.  But wow that pic does look good

In addition to considering our ideas only so far as they work within the greater game design, I sincerely hope the critical feedback doesn't come across too negatively. I know that when I produce a legal-size page of errors and bugs, it's only because - despite those things - the game was still interesting and fun enough to play through long enough to find them.

I agree. I watched the forums for a long time and the game seemed to keep shifting to accommodate user ideas. The only point that there was not alot of communication was the week or two before it went gold. No need to drudge up that fiasco, but it didn't really matter how good the gameplay was in 1.0 given all the technical problems. 

This beta is alot healthier. There was a moment there last month where the testers started throwing out extreme ideas with the delusion of changing the game, but that has died down. The trick with suggesting an idea is making sure it fits within the scope of the devs' vision for the game. Otherwise, just reporting the problem is enough. I try to make a distinction in my paragraphs between the problem and my personal solutions. There are plenty of developer choices that I disagree with, but I have to remind myself that it's not my game and I can probably mod it in later anyways. Like tile bonuses in tactical combat. 

It's not exactly a surprise that someone in the community thinks, regardless of the truth, that the solution to every problem is to listen to the community more. What that really means is that you should do what he tells you. There are always one or two of those in real life or on forums.

The basics are looking good. Now make something nice out of it. And then give us the mod tools so we can screw it up

A good suggestion example:

Archers don't scale up. Can we make accuracy be to ranged units what strength is to Melee units.

A suggestion example we can't use:

I think FE should be the best of Master of Magic (well the one that was modded over several years, not the original release) PLUS Age of Wonders:SW (not the original AOW or AOW2 but AOW2:SW) PLUS Total War. 

... and ponies.

Hey!

Nothing wrong with pink ponies for Lord Xia.

And damn, I'm getting my hopes up again. Have to read forum suggestions to fall into despair again

Good point Brad. I guess that as a beta tester our main role is to communicate feedback about the problems we are experiencing with the game and the game-play. Then it is up the team to make use of that feedback as they will. Our beta-test suggestions are more about exploring ways around the issues than actually requesting changes so your ability to read between the lines and address the underlying causes is all that is really important.

BTW, I haven't seen any more news about the release of the next beta. I guess this week is out now. Has anything been mentioned?

Am I mistaken in thinking that most if not all of the people playing the beta puchased Elemental:War of Magic? If that's the case it really should't matter if the next beta version is perfect. FE is already a huge improvement over E:WoM. I'm already a customer and I'm just interested in playing the game with the major bugs dealt with. Doesn't have to be perfect.

@ frogboy

I think Dexterity should be to Archers what Strength is for Melee

I no longer think maps need to be larger. Only less total movement (no move 10 units, no +3 move traits for melee units (even if its only for the first round of combat))

-> and I agree with most of your E:WoM assessment.

Tasunke is probably right. Accuracy is a secondary factor for an archer. The only way an archer will be able to keep up with Strength is by getting crits. 

Sorry, not buying it. I was there and I can dredge up threads over a dozen pages long where yes you implemented an "idea" but you didn't listen to "feedback". Key difference. Listening to feedback consists a lot more of just incorporating ideas your read somewhere.

When you announced going gold the "idea" wasn't that it was ready. The feedback I read was overwhelmingly that the game wasn't ready. I know you were scouring the web all over for "ideas", but you weren't spending enough time in the very beta forums reading the reactions (feedback) to a lot of those "ideas" after they were implemented. It was a huge difference between when I participated in the Galciv Twilight beta and the WoM beta.

I get this response all too often in the QA field as well. Many companies "take the idea" and then close their ears to QA, employees, and customers once management has "made the decision". It generally ends with lost sales, often layoffs and management coming back to QA asking what went wrong so we can repeat ourselves one more time.

I remember a crash report I submitted in beta 2 and was reproducible all the way through launch. By late in beta there weren't even responses to the fact in what going unfixed. The lesson I learned was that once you thought you had addressed the issue internally, you turned the blinders on to what your customers thought. I remember you took an idea about global resources in an off-topic thread and declared it a done deal after it stirred up a ton of controversy and ignored all negative feedback. I'm sure you had your reasons, but don't call it communicating or responding to your beta testers. I remember the discussion on the games economy you solicited before beta launched that went on for what seemed like dozens of pages only to in the end announce you were going with "None of the above" and not soliciting feedback on your new "idea". It isn't that you don't need a disciplined design approach, but if you ignore the feedback you solicit from beta testers how can you expect not to get negative reviews when the game releases? That the negative press reviews surprised you showed how out of touch with what beta testers were saying on these very forums.

If you think the problem with War of Magic was that you borrowed too many ideas you learned the wrong lesson from all the people who warned you not to launch. The problem was a lack of real communication with your testers and a head in the sand management mentality.

You are definitely doing better on the design discipline with Fallen Enchantress, I reserve my judgement on listening to beta testers as we see how the beta releases evolve.

I would like EFE to be the best of Civ IV, King's Bounty, Master of Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, Tropico, and World of Warcraft.  Is that a good suggestion?

I'd prefer the best of Civ IV(FFH2), Medieval2: Total War, and Warhammer40k

I'd like a mix of SC2, From Dust, King Arthur - the Warfare Roleplaying game, Populos 3, Warcraft 2 DOTA TFT version, SC1 before they fixed the drone exploit, and the graphics from 1.5 century in the future running on today's computers. The AI should be a real person playing against me, and it can take exactly 0 seconds to process each turn.

Don't forget Pool of Radiance...

might as well add a little X-COM to the mix too... 

It has died down because the devs stated that those ideas were basically redirected to the garbage bin. That means one who thinks some of the issues are truly deep and can't be solved with just a touch of balancing here and there has to give up and just wait and see if he was right all along.

Actually, I do agree with Brad that trying to cram every suggested feature into the game is a recipe for disaster. I do believe that that problem may have tainted WoM, to an extent. 

But please, don't tell us that the initial WoM's design was "basically MoM". Not one of things that made MoM MoM was to be found in WoM (no pun intended). If there ever was, it was erased before release. We can't pretend now that WoM's only problem was that "too many things were added". If that were true, removing features (which has been done extensively since release) would have given us something at least reminiscent of MoM.

Regardless of the past, I'm looking forward to the next Beta, which sounds like next week. Brad's posts do a great job of giving us some info of what's coming as well as knowing what's up next. Getting ready to file another round of bugs/suggestions and seeing which of my bugs/suggestions I've already filed were taken into account. I'll find out soon!

Were you here several years ago when Elemental was being thought up? As I recall, the game did start out as MoM and the community, most of whom have since left, wanted the game to be significantly different. But this thread isn't about WoM. If people want to rehash the past, there is a subforum for that. Please use it. 

I read about WoM maybe a couple of months before its release. Regardless of what you just said, at that time it was still advertised as MoM's spiritual successor. Which is the one and only reason I preordered it (well, I liked the graphics too, and I still do). I'll say it again: there was not even a trace of MoM in WoM, and it was not certainly a case of "too much added stuff" hiding them. 

Stardock's CEO brought up the issue, please do reroute your suggestion to him. To me it's all pertinent anyway, since Brad's opinion on WoM will necessarily have an impact on FE. To be fair, while the statement I commented upon is a little worrying in this sense, I do find today's journal encouraging.