Lessons from Elemental

from GalCiv3 Forums

A few weeks ago the launch of Rome 2 brought back certain memories of the Elemental launch. Basically they'd stuck to a release date that they should have pushed back, and the result was a game that was several patches sort of decently playable, along with various other problems that will take longer to sort out. Now with the launch of GC3, I'm kind of thinking about the lessons learnt from those sort of debacles. I'm sure SD have done this to death in-house, but speaking as someone who was with Elemental from pre-alpha, here's my thoughts about the dev process and things SD must watch out for.

 

1. Don't commit to a release date too early (no matter how much your marketing team begs you for it). Development is an unpredictable business, which my day-to-day job is making me painfully aware of at the moment. Also, is far better to let a date slip at short notice than release a bug-fest. Sure, you'll get some hate and frustrations for it, but nowhere near as much as the alternative.

 

2. Keep someone high-up independent from the process. I think this was one of the fundamental issues in Elemental, which I remember Brad talking about before. When you are tied up in something you really care about, it is easy to have your vision clouded by wanting it to be as good as you want it. In Elemental everyone high-up was involved, and it meant that there was no devil's advocate to point out the flaws that were deep in the game. You need someone independent to be honest and forthright about issues.

 

3. It is better to ditch an unworkable feature and try something else than endlessly try and tinker it to save it from oblivion. There were a few features early on in Elemental that were 'sounds like a good idea at the time' but totally unworkable. The prime example I remember was sovereign death = game over. A cool idea but a gameplay killer as who wants to risk a game-over in something you've played 20 hours on, especially when it is hard to retreat from battles and there's a large element of chance. This stuck around and stuck around with umpteen tweaks, when it was never going to work. This relates a bit to the above point - you need a sharpshooter on bad ideas (as well as the alpha and beta testing masses).

 

4. Testers can give much better feedback if they know what is coming. This is a hard one, and may only really work for alpha if at all (as it would require a certain amount of keeping stuff out of the eye of anyone not on the alpha). One problem I found with Elemental was that the only source of info on updates was public journals by Brad et al. This meant that, as there were cool features they wanted to keep under wraps from a 'keeping the public interested' point of view, it was very hard to get an idea of the game except from what was in front of you. I could report bugs, and say 'this works, this doesn't', but often I was left with 'this is rubbish, but I'm sure it will improve' without really knowing this way or that. In the end I found the pre-alpha stage simply didn't work for this reason - the game was too incomplete to test from a 'are these features fun' point of view, and since the process was very long we all ended up falling into the traps of points 2 and 3.

 

I'm still debating whether to sign up for the alpha and all the cool stuff - it depends whether I think I will be able to devote enough time and energy to make it worth it. But I have confidence this time that SD have learnt from that saga.

36,246 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I think Stardock has learned from Elemental. They went out of their way to make up for it, apologized multiple times, handed out more free stuff than I felt was necessary, and Fallen Enchantress was a solid release. Not perfect perhaps, but nothing at all like Elemental had been, and above the average quality of today's releases.

Personally, I feel it's past time to let them live down the Elemental fiasco.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Mivo, reply 1

I think Stardock has learned from Elemental. They went out of their way to make up for it, apologized multiple times, handed out more free stuff than I felt was necessary, and Fallen Enchantress was a solid release. Not perfect perhaps, but nothing at all like Elemental had been, and above the average quality of today's releases.

Personally, I feel it's past time to let them live down the Elemental fiasco.

 

Agree 100%

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Having released Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes, are we still to suppose that they haven't learnt their Elemental lesson? Nothing wrong with being cautious, mind you, but Elemental is in the distant past.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top



2. Keep someone high-up independent from the process. I think this was one of the fundamental issues in Elemental, which I remember Brad talking about before. When you are tied up in something you really care about, it is easy to have your vision clouded by wanting it to be as good as you want it. In Elemental everyone high-up was involved, and it meant that there was no devil's advocate to point out the flaws that were deep in the game. You need someone independent to be honest and forthright about issues.

Much of what you said I heartily agree with, point 1 especially -- but I'm sure Brad learned that lesson well.  Addressing it with point 2, I think, he has also learned ... I think Derek Paxton would be great for this.  It sounds (though I'm not certain) as though Derek is working on other projects (not directly on GC3) ... I think it would be great for him to jump in to take a hard look at GC3 maybe mid to late in the Beta phase just for this.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

3. It is better to ditch an unworkable feature and try something else than endlessly try and tinker it to save it from oblivion. There were a few features early on in Elemental that were 'sounds like a good idea at the time' but totally unworkable. The prime example I remember was sovereign death = game over. A cool idea but a gameplay killer as who wants to risk a game-over in something you've played 20 hours on, especially when it is hard to retreat from battles and there's a large element of chance. This stuck around and stuck around with umpteen tweaks, when it was never going to work. This relates a bit to the above point - you need a sharpshooter on bad ideas (as well as the alpha and beta testing masses).

While I like the concept... the fact is, I still think that sovereign death = game over is a good idea.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting RonLugge, reply 5


3. It is better to ditch an unworkable feature and try something else than endlessly try and tinker it to save it from oblivion. There were a few features early on in Elemental that were 'sounds like a good idea at the time' but totally unworkable. The prime example I remember was sovereign death = game over. A cool idea but a gameplay killer as who wants to risk a game-over in something you've played 20 hours on, especially when it is hard to retreat from battles and there's a large element of chance. This stuck around and stuck around with umpteen tweaks, when it was never going to work. This relates a bit to the above point - you need a sharpshooter on bad ideas (as well as the alpha and beta testing masses).

While I like the concept... the fact is, I still think that sovereign death = game over is a good idea.

 

The solution is simple. Just like other games have the "lose your capital = game over" option, just make "sovereign death = game over" optional.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Cikomyr, reply 6


The solution is simple. Just like other games have the "lose your capital = game over" option, just make "sovereign death = game over" optional.

 

Optionitis will make game development/balance impossible :P

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Mivo, reply 1

I think Stardock has learned from Elemental. They went out of their way to make up for it, apologized multiple times, handed out more free stuff than I felt was necessary, and Fallen Enchantress was a solid release. Not perfect perhaps, but nothing at all like Elemental had been, and above the average quality of today's releases.

Personally, I feel it's past time to let them live down the Elemental fiasco.

 

Probably no other company before or since did so much to regain the support of its fans than SD after the Elemental saga. They've sorted out the mess - I just want to make sure they don't get into it again.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

In keeping with the title of the post, one thing I liked from Elemental that I'd like to see here is, for lack of a better description, a never-ending research tree. I found in most of my GCII games, I had long finished researching everything before the game ends, By being able to research certain items indefinitely (i.e., economy +5% or shields +10%) may be worthwhile.

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I agree with the don't release the game too early point however I never felt that Elemental suffered from an early release. The game felt like it had a distinct lack of direction.

You can release a game really early in it's development, and there have been several that do it well, but the game needs a really strong sense of direction based on the developer's vision. Features and mechanics can be tweaked or dropped along the way to make the game better but adding new features that weren't original on the design is something that shouldn't really be done unless there is time near the end or in a patch/expansion after release. Otherwise you end up with feature creep which is an easy trap for developers to fall into and then the game is never done.

During the early days of Elemental the mechanics of lots of different things in the game where being completely redone with nearly each patch it seemed.  So it felt a bit like the developers were unsure what to do and in some cases were simply taking suggestions from the forums that sounded nice. Most of the talk from the Devs seem to be about how proud they were of the engine. So at the time it felt more like in their rush to make a successor to MOM they focused on making a great engine but not as much on the actual detailed mechanics of how players would play the game created with that engine.

Eventually they seem to toss their hands up on the train wreck and focus on making the sequel by bringing in someone with a strong vision for fantasy 4x games. I've played Fallen Enchantress and while it looks very similar to Elemental the game plays completely different and is a pretty good game.

 

Given what I've read thus far from the Developers it seems like they have a very strong vision of what they want GC3 to be. Combine that with the fact that they have experience with this franchise and genre. The result I think is bound to be a strong showing regardless of a very early beta release.

Sure there will always be critics as some what RT tactical combat while others want TB and still others want none at all. There are plenty of other examples but as long as the developers hold true to their vision for GC3 I think it will turn out fine. And they remember the most important thing of all, "Doesn't matter what you do, someone isn't gonna be happy."

 

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

GalCiv2 is one of the absolutely best games I've ever played. I'm not worried. Stardock will make it once again.