
Soon after I started writing for Gear Diary the game DemiGod, developed by Gas Powered Games and published by Stardock Software, was released. I had started to write a sprawling article about it – not so much as a review (which I did HERE) but as a rant at how the launch of a solid multiplayer-focused game was messed up because retailers don’t care about respecting the ’street date’ for a small publisher like Stardock. I ended up rolling bits of it into the review:
GameStop started selling the weekend before the game was supposed to be released, which quickly led to pirated versions quickly becoming available (due to the lack of DRM ). This resulted in the multiplayer servers being hammered before anyone expected players to be on them, causing loads of issues and a support nightmare. The estimate was that of all players on the servers on the first official release day, only 18,000 were legitimate paying customers, while more than 120,000 were using pirated copies! The combination of piracy and a greedy GameStop releasing early to pre-empt sales on Impulse resulted in disasters on the multiplayer servers. Unfortunately many reviewers for top-sites were trying to get in their play time for evaluation during that exact period, resulting in some critical scores and scathing reviews based on performance issues caused largely by things beyond the scope of the developers control.
I remember at the time Stardock addressed the situation admirably, bringing EVERYONE in on the weekend and working to deal with the bugs and load balancing the servers and other issues related to a complex launch such as that. THERE was much hand-wringing and teeth gnashing, but ultimately things worked out quite well as Stardock responded amazingly and gamers placed the blame wHERE it belonged – at the feet of pirates and greedy retailers.
All of this is relevant, you will see shortly, as Stardock has recently released a new game – Elemental: War of Magic.
Gamers know and love Brad Wardell, the founder and head of Stardock, the company that is part developer (of great games like Galactic Civilizations II) and the Impulse digital download PC game store. He is one of the ‘good guys’, as it were. Back in 2008 he penned an infamous ‘Gamers Bill of Rights’, wHEREin he laid out the things that all gamers should expect and deserve. HERE is a critical part of that document:
No. 3: “Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.” Users want support for a game after it’s released. Believe it or not, they don’t want buggy software that gets maybe one patch after launch. Gamers want a reasonable amount of support post-launch.
So why does this matter? As I said before this related to the recent release of Stardock’s Elemental: War of Magic.
It was a game I had very much been looking forward to, but had planned to wait before getting due to my own schedule … quite frankly I knew I wouldn’t play so I hoped to grab a sale.
But the Friday before the release date, word came that the game was already showing up in stores, and as a result Stardock quickly dumped the game out to pre-order folks who were promised one-day-early access as part of their pre-order. All I could think was ‘oh boy … HERE we go again!’ I was immediately annoyed at the retailers, but quickly realized that while they held some blame, the game as released just a few days early was REALLY in rough shape!
Over at the Qt3 forums tHERE is a massive thread, and on the Monday before scheduled release when they opened the game up for the pre-order customers Brad lashed out:
Also, to anyone, like you Ben, saying the game is like an “early beta” then well, please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.
PC gamer writer Tom Francis noted that thread in an article wHERE he advised gamers to ’stay far away … for now’:
Brad wants people like me to stop buying Stardock games. I have a different suggestion: we should stop buying Stardock games at launch. In that one respect, I have to stop being a Stardock fan. I can no longer trust them to wait until they’re sure the game is in a fit state to play before charging money for it, or even to patch it to a fit state at the time it’s first available to me. That’s not a great message to send to your fans, because first week sales are so important to a company, but as a fan I can live with each release date being one week later in my head.
Francis was referring to the two separate ‘Day 0′ patches that were issued for the game, one of which was planned and the other rushed, and how they failed to deal with many significant issues he continued to experience.
As an aside, a common question is ‘why not just delay’? The answer is equally simple – retailers like Walmart have ’shelf opportunities’, wHERE you can get your product a prime location … and if they didn’t launch in August the next such opportunity wouldn’t come until February!
The common theme I was hearing was that Elemental had a load of potential but was a total unfinished mess. Which of course made it completely impossible for me to resist running out and grabbing the game immediately! And, not surprisingly, I confirmed all of those ‘unfinished mess’ sentiments.
Today they released patch 1.07. Yes, that is correct – this is the *7th* patch since the game was released on August 24th – just 9 days ago! (not exactly accurate as they ended up jumping from ‘Day 0′ patches to 1.05, then 1.06 and now 1.07) I am including the full patch release notes at the end of this … well, because for a game with this much patching in such short order the amount done is simply staggering.
A lot of criticism has been directed at Brad Wardell, he of the ‘Gamers Bill of Rights’ – of which Elemental seems certainly to have broken #3 pretty resoundingly! From a large publisher we would expect a bunch of ‘lawyering up’ and PR BS … but Brad has taken full ownership of the issue. He is on vacation but recently responded on the official game forums:
From ‘Member #1′ Brad Wardell (aka Frogboy)
(I’m up north on vacation typing on an extremely slow connection so bear with me)
I don’t think people yet fully realize the completeness of Stardock’s fail on Elemental’s launch.
I’m going to write more about this but not only did we think v1.05 was ready for everyone but we felt v1.0 was too. That’s the level of disconnect/poor judgment on our part we’re talking about.
If the game had come out in February, it would still have been a disastrous launch because lack of time wasn’t the issue. It was blindness, sheer blindness. We felt the game was finished. And I speak of v1.0, not v1.05. Blindness.
THERE will be massive consequences for Stardock’s game studio. I’ll be talking more about this when I get back. But the game wasn’t released early. The game was released poorly. Head in the sand syndrome imo. I’ve read the reviews as much as possible given my hideous internet access up HERE and I agree with them. We just didn’t see what they were talking about. We thought any complaints would be about polish points or something.
The point is, the issue HERE is far far worse than many of you think it is. I wish it was an issue of the game being released too early. That’s an easy thing for a company to “fix”. Elemental’s launch is the result of catastrophic poor judgment on my part.
EVERY competent software developer knows that the programmer must never be the one deciding whether the program is done. Yet, my love of Elemental broke my self discipline and I began coding on the game itself in vast amounts and lost any sense of objectivity on wHERE the game’s state was. I normally only program the AI on our games so I can keep a level of distance from the game itself to determine whether it’s “Ready”. On Elemental, I was in love with the world and the game and lost my impartiality.
Wow … that is a pretty broad statement and admission of culpability – and as he says, this isn’t like releasing something unfinished or sloppy like Dungeon Lords or Gothic 3 … these guys thought they were DONE! Having played only a small amount I am already stunned that tHERE is any way they could fail to see the issues.
And HERE Brad laying out his plans in a whole different thread:
A quick note from Brad on Elemental
Edge…network…painful..
By Frogboy Posted August 29, 2010 4:45:29 PM
Greetings!
I’m pretty far from a good net connection so I’ll keep this brief
Let me say that I’m glad that most people seem to like the game. This message, however, is for those who are disappointed with Elemental so far.
Stardock is not just a game studio but it is also a publisher. What does this mean? Well, historically, the way it works is a game is released and if people don’t like it, they’re supposed to buy some expansion pack for it that “fixes” things that people thought should be in the original version.
We don’t have to do that because we’re both the studio and the publisher.
That means we can release free “expansion packs” for Elemental until such a high percentage of players love the game that only then can we discuss sequels or paid expansions.
Having had the opportunity to finally get out of the office for the first time in months has let me look at the game (and ahem, play the game for crazy amounts) of time from a new perspective.
I should also say that regardless of sales or reviews, our commitment to Elemental will not be affected. As some of you know, most of our company’s revenue doesn’t come from developing games. Even if the game didn’t sell another copy, we would still continue our update schedule.
So what will be the concrete results of this?
1. In September we will release v1.1 which will be the first major revision to the game that takes into account the feedback we’re getting from players. This will be a pretty substantial change. In particular, character creation, magic (think, shared mana pools),
2. We are going to go ahead and make a more traditional tutorial. I’m not a fan of tutorials but some of my grognard friends have had trouble figuring out the mechanics which means to me that we have to do something about that.
3. We are going to move Book 2: Magesa out of a future expansion pack and into the base game in a future “mega” update, likely late Fall.
4. As mentioned on the forums back in July-ish, we plan to make a new DVD gold master available to those with limited Internet connections later this Fall.
5. As discussed (I think) last Winter, I will be taking a sabbatical this Fall specifically so I can dedicate time to AI and modding so that others, long after me, can use the Elemental engine to create other things (you will need to know Python to really go crazy with it).
6. I will NOT be ceasing my postings on other forums. The guys on Qt3 and Octopus Overlords and elsewHERE are my friends. I’m no more going to stop posting tHERE then I would stop going out with my friends to movies and other “public places” wHERE, heaven forbid, someone datamining my comments might find a “gotcha moment”. Those people are my friends both on the forums and outside the forums. Interacting with you guys is a major reason I like making games in the first place.
7. To those reviewing the game: I would urge you to review the game prior to v1.1. I say this because v1.05 (the release day version) is the version of the game that was originally released and if that version of the game is considered flawed then my view is that Stardock should suffer the consequences for that. We appreciate the kindness and patience many people have shown. I just think game studios, including Stardock, need to be conscious of what they release and not expect to “patch themselves out of trouble”. I do believe Elemental is, by far, the best game we’ve ever made but I also agree with most of the criticisms I’ve read too. The state of PC entertainment has changed since 2006 (when we released GalCiv II) and it is our responsibility to stay with the times.
In short, we love this game. And we love this community. We’re not going to be leaving this game to work on some other game. We’re with it and you guys for the long haul.
I won’t be around to answer questions until next week so I hope this answers some questions.
It is interesting some of the stuff he says tHERE – particularly how he wants the game judged on 1.05. That is the version I last played, though when I next log in to Impulse it should update me (nice thing about the system).
I also couldn’t help but thinking ‘thank goodness’ when reading about the tutorial! Stardock is notorious for wanting you to just dive into a game and explore the interface as much as anything else. Personally I like a tutorial to help me get my bearings … so with a deep and screwed up game like Elemental I really wanted one. Still do.
So what other thoughts do I have?
People and companies who make products are far from perfect. THERE are always issues of myopia, of the vicious ‘product management triangle’ which tells you that you can only control two of the three key elements of time, resources and quality … and the other will be an outcome of those you do control.
I really hope that Stardock does well by customers – I remember well how poorly the original Sacred launched in early 2004, but by issuing tons of patches that showed they were listing and also making the ‘Sacred Plus Pack’ that was a planned expansion available for free, they earned tremendous goodwill that allowed gamers to forgive the launch problems.
But from now on they also need to do whatever it takes to make sure THEY obey the ‘Gamers Bill of Rights’!
HERE is the patch list: (note – tHERE is nothing after that, so if you get bored, feel free to stop reading!)
More of a maintenance update than anything, Elemental v1.07 focuses on the performance issues seen by both high and low end users. THERE are more improvements to come as code is continually improved and tile-designs are streamlined, but this update should bring a healthy FPS boost to all. And, if your frames per second remain under-par, new options will give you additional wiggle-room.
That’s not to say gameplay dosen’t get some update love…resources no longer use up city tiles, unit groups save out the necessary info to regenerate themselves on reload, and item stacking heroes is a thing of the past…but performance, memory usage, and overall stability were our targets HERE.
Note: A 1.07.025 hotfix was published with a fix for a crash in the ‘Custom Sovereign’ system (Merchant/Brilliant/Meditative traits). This would have caused a crash loading saved sovereigns or games with those traits applied as well.
—————————————————
———– Elemental v1.07 Change Log ———–
—————————————————
***************
* Performance *
+ Major improvement to rendering system, especially when over cities.
+ Condensed scene rendering process from 3 passes through scene into a single pass
+ Bunch of fixes to the issues behind “DX Error: Invalid Call”, particularly when Alt-Tab’ing. This will continue to be worked on.
+ Added new framerate limiter ( limits framerate to refresh rate of device )
- Removed throttle framerates option (this is always on now)
+ Particle Effects no longer render if the “Disable Particle Effects” option is on
+ Outlines now LOD-out as you zoom out
+ Added option “Disable Outlines” to the options screen to turn off rendering outlines (Might help lower-end machines, and some people prefer no outlines)
+ Commented out unnecessary debug messages
*************
* Bug Fixes *
+ Fixed Various Memory Leaks
+ Fixed the issue that was causing the unimproved tile designs for elemental shards to stick around after a shard-harvesting improvement was built on top of them.
+ fixed a bug wHERE if you have the option on wHERE when entering/leaving city build mode, the camera switches between overhead and default view, you could get stuck in overhead view (and forced to manually move the camera back) if you pressed the city build mode button, while already in city build mode
+ fixed bug wHERE AI demands a tribute of 0 gildar
+ fixed display issue wHERE improvement cost entries overfilled the improvement build list
+ fixed display issue wHERE units with long names overfilled the name area on the level up wnd.
+ fixed display issue on battle init wnd, if defense or attack was negative then it showed up as a huge number. Beserker ring gives a -3 to defense, which could give you negative overall defense. Same might be true of attack if in the future we have some strange item that decreases your attack.
+ Fixed bug wHERE units in tile designs (like horses, wargs, etc) would not fade out when the tile is under fog of war
+ Fixed “jumping units” when starting new game from within a game (or loading a game within a game)
+ Other fixes regarding battle initition window, creating mountains in map editor, first contact status not being set to relation unknown
+ Fixed a bug wHERE improvements that were flagged as once-per-city were able
to be placed twice.
**********************
* Gameplay / Balance *
+ Fixed bug wHERE economic treaty gold bonuses weren’t getting added to the global resource pool
+ Changed how creatures and NPCs increase their stats when they level up to nerf incredibly powerful high-level monsters running around
+ Stacking of items fixed (can now only wear 1 per type per champion)
+ Pioneers in a boat can no longer build a Settlement at sea
+ Wild improvements will now be able to be taken into account in a city’s resource usage correctly, if any of them ever have negative resource production
+ Refugee camps (and other wild improvements that provide population storage bonuses) improvements
+ Fixed Miner sovereign profession bonus
+ Fixed Great Warriors faction bonus
+ Removed really high starting mana regen ability from Umber’s faction config
+ Fixed Advanced Tracking techs (in both tech trees) to change the player ability that is hooked up to affect movement
+ Fixed broken productionreq tag on vengeance coating
+ References to Ice shards changed to Water for consistency
+ Sprint duration adjusted to 2
+ Lowered HP for fallen peasant
+ Fixed up resource hoard description text
+ Various food resources now provide different amounts as indicated by old description text
+ Improved output of Temple of Essence
+ Improved output of Tower of Titans, Tower of Souls
+ Fixed construction resource cost for curgen’s exchange
+ Resource hoard costs now mirror kingdoms resource costs
+ Fixed up description text for construction yard
+ Great Theatre no longer provides +100% Gildar, only +100% Prestige
+ AI: Added code to send sovereign back to his capital city if he has no destination after the early phase of the game
+ Fixes for various terrain types not responding to RaiseLand spell
+ Resource hoards no longer deduct from the buildable tiles of a city (the ‘bananna cities’ from the forums)
***********
* Battles *
+ Changed the calculation for battle damage to take multiple troops into better account (with each unit getting an individual attack roll).
+ Every time panic is caused, the combat text for the panic will be shown.
+ Fixed a problem wHERE misses and non-damage spells would cause an on hit animation to be played in tactical battles.
+ Fixed a possible bug wHERE units would no longer update their troop counts after reaching a single troop left.
+ When selecting the spell book in tactical battles the cursor should now reset to the arrow.
+ When clicking on a unit’s hiergemenon entry in tactical battles the cursor should now reset to the arrow.
+ Turned on bounding box picking for tactical battles to improve the feel of unit selection.
+ Selecting units should now be turned back on while other units are animating in tactical battles.
+ Fixed a bug wHERE unit tooltips in tactical battles would draw over tooltips for items and spells.
+ Added some checks to the battle init window to stop the window from showing when defenders or attackers were null. Also added logic to clear waiting flags in this case.
******
* UI *
+ Adopted the unit vitals context for a Details tab to show when a wild improvement is selected on the main map, to give more meaningful and easier to read information
- If the improvement is under construction, it says so and uses the level slider to show the progress towards completion and the turns left
- If the improvement is done, it shows what that improvement is producing and has an entry to get further information about the improvement by opening up the lorebook
- Also, it shows which city an improvement is linked to, or “Not linked” if it isn’t. If it is linked, the tooltip explains that this city is contributing production bonuses to the resource production of that improvement. If the improvement is not linked, the tooltip says how many tiles the nearest city needs to be closer to link with that city, explaining that it will be able to get city production bonuses if it does link
+ New Tactical Icons hooked up for Smelter, Trade Center, Construction Yard, Merchant Guild
+ New Tile Designs for Ventri Iron Mine, Stone Quarry, Clay Quarry, Marble Quarry, Drath Village, Shrill Hive, Spider Nest
+ Fixed bug wHERE double-clicking on a spell you couldn’t cast from the spellbook popup would queue a bunch of “Can’t cast tactical spell” message boxes to appear over and over, now just plays a little failure sound if something that can’t be cast is double-clicked
+ Fixed a typo in a campaign dialog
+ When you build an improvement on a resource, the map notifier for it is removed
+ Fixed typo “completly restored” to “completely restored”
+ Fixed some places wHERE the display of per-turn gold production lagged behind changes to it, gets rid of some income discrepancies between some screens when loading a game, adding/cancelling a treaty, etc.
****************
* Known Issues *
+ Tactical Battles: Stuck turn if you use space bar or click “Pass Turn” button while selected unit is moving. Clicking auto-resolve will end the battle if the turn is stuck.
+ Occasional instances of damage indicators not appearing over units.
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