Hey guys,
I'm one of the many beta testers and was very critical in the posts I did make - can't help it, sycophantic platitudes disgust me - all throughout. Whilst I am looking forward to playing Elemental more over the course of the next few weeks, I can't help but get the feeling this is beta 5, I wish it were not so, and I'm not just trying to complain, it's just how I perceive things. I've noticed a few things peppered about after playing around 3 or so hours. So this is really a combined bugs/rant/general impressions thread.
1. The build quarry option popup doesn't show any costs, it simply reads - 'Build Quarry:' - that is all.
2. Spiderlings are louder than bears - why anyone would have the rationale to decide this I don't know.
3. The bear maul attack did nothing, after repeated uses across repeated battles, everything it mauled still acted straight after, and there was no visual indication (on the cards or the character itself) that anything was different. Abilities showcase FTW!
4. One of the quests involving refugees had a 'refugee tile' that in no way represented poeple existing in any capacity, and was in fact a dilapidated old ruin sinking into the ground. If you aren't going to make a new tile to fill what's needed in the quest, at least use a tile that remotely resembles its name.
5. Cards and enemy team health bars show combat damage and deplete before animations, whilst this is minor, it takes away some of the random feel (which this game needs in anything it can find) from combat.
6. Spell balance, and this one really really ticks me off because it's just poor. If a game is going to be called war of magic, at least have a magic system that's worth something. The current system is reasonably boring and has a limited number of spells that are relatively similar and totally unbalanced. For instance (with intelligence 13 character):
Fire Dart - costs 2, max 7.5 damage.
Ice bolt/every other generic 1st level damage spell - costs 3, max 15
Melting touch - costs 2, max 30 damage
I don't care if it only has a range of two, this is blatantly broken and just ridiculous. There have been countless posts about the magic system, and from what I can see nothing has really happened here. Shame.
7. Research, this one is the kicker. It's pathetic, to put it simply. Researching should be interesting and varied. There is still no real feel of why I'm doing this, and certainly no variability. I don't care if there are a few different techs across each team - I don't want to be researching the same boring technology every time I play a game with the team I like. If you're going to add research, add it for a reason, and not just as filler. I made a post on this (https://forums.elementalgame.com/387267)and after a few responses I was starting to look up. Obviously I'm not meant to.
8. Static. Nothing in this game is dynamic. That's that.
9. The campaign gives me no incentive to follow this character (I can't even remember his name, Relias I think). Who is he, what the hell is he doing here, 3 sentences of filler text and some pretty drawings isn't an introduction. Also, it's worth mentioning that I got a huge laugh out of the logic of the characters facing the spiders - You might not be able to fight those spiders off, lets build a city so we can shop
,
The new world is f&^%ed
10. When I choose to try and create a new tactical battle map in the editor it crashes, every time. No debug generated, this just isn't good enough.
11. That multiplayer button on the menu screen has been irritating me and is still irritating me. It's not hard to change an interface. If multiplayer isn't in at the moment, don't advertise it.
12. Animations aren't showing, at all.
13. Spelling, punctuation and grammar. If you need gamers to point this out, less time on the forums and more time reading the things you type in your game. Simple.
That's pretty much it for now (will edit and update when I find more), the game is a reasonable enough time filler, and Stardock has my money now so I guess all of the above doesn't really matter, except I actually felt an investment in this game because I preordered and beta tested it. Shame.
Here's to hoping,
Paradoxical