Happy with beta but also very worried

Same, and it's infuriating. I have a new computer and it still runs terribly. I can play BF3 or Witcher 2 or DoW2 or whatever at 1920x1080, but this game brings my PC to its knees.

I really hope it isn't just inherent to the engine, it would suck to have so much design effort poured into a game burdened with awful technical performance and bad ui.

These seem like very valid worries to me.  Please help out by sending in bug and crash reports.  I want this game to work as well as possible by the time I get it

Please do not judge the game based on your poor experience so far. A big reason for open beta is to test the game engine. There are, as you know, literally tens of thousands of possible computer hardware combinations. It is impossible to test for a company like Stardock.

A game that does not crash is the most important goal, for any game. It cannot be a success if it crashes. Many times in E:wom I was enjoying myself greatly, only to have the game crash. And I just stopped playing. It kills the fun in a game.

@LordXia

Yeah I made a separate thread a couple days ago with the issues and screenshots...I also sent in my .err file as well. 

In principle I'd agree...the problem is we have some history here that kind of changes that notion of beta.  It's all the same stuff (at least perception wise)...so in my mind nothing has changed on this front and if that stuff wasn't at least partially sorted in the 1 1/2 years of extra development, what chance is there that it will be during this beta?

Very strange.  I have played many hours without any significant technical problems.  Makes me think that the issues have to do with the game compatibility with specific hardware.

This was the same for the original Elemental, some were having no issues, others major issues.  Every game is like this realistically, but there is something to be said about how many people are effected.  I think Brad once estimated it was like 20% of user effected, which is obviously out of the norm for acceptable and far too high.

Who knows how many people are effected with these issues for FE Beta, maybe it's better, all I know is I'm affected and that's really all that matters for me.

Well, you are doing all you can do, hope SD looks into and fixes it for you and anyone else having those problems.

I am judging it, because this game is using the same engine as Elemental, and it still has the same ui issues, the same performance problems.

I don't care about crashes or game balance issues - those are genuine beta traits. Bad performance _might_ bet a beta trait, but they've already had a year and a half+ to tune the engine.

It's run poorly for me across three different computers, ati and nvidia. Performance complaints were all over the place around Elemental's launch as well.

It's a very valid concern, the beta excuse is thin at the best of times, in this case it barely applies.

Barely applies? It's a new game with massive modifications on the engine from previous versions. It's JUST gone into open beta with the express intent of finding crashes and bugs and testing balance. So it absolutely applies, and some people will have a terrible beta experience due to these things.

Besides, passing any judgement on the game as a final product at this point is pointless. Judgement = release. Up until that, we're providing feedback.

It's the same engine (correct me if I am wrong) and with what appears to be the same exact problems from before.  Mind you, these problems *still* exist in WoM for a lot of people and even with over a year of new development also continue persist in FE.

Personally I think it's something inherent with the engine, rather than just some beta niggles yet to be worked out.  I think for those people who still have these issues with FE, things are not looking bright.

Anyways the purpose is not really to "judge" the game, but instead bring notice to what appears to be an old issue, and the importance to fixing these issues and fixing them fast. 

They need to see the frustration of the people effected IMO, considering what happened in the past.

Yes, absolutely. And in no way do I want to marginalize those who are having problems. As I said, I myself do NOT play games that crash period. So all I can say is please keep reporting crashes, and try to keep an open mind that it can improve. But of course I can't guarantee that it will.

PS. One major issue with E:wom was pixel shader 2.0, which is now 3.0. What that resulted in was that people with new hardware couldn't run the game, and people with old hardware could. This time, their approach is to go for 3.0, which will make it impossible to run FE on old or deprecated computers, but it should run much better on new computers. That's the major engine change in FE, afaik.

Interesting.  Unlike those games, this game is heavily multithreaded.  Perhaps that's where your problem stems from.

Anyways, very different from my experience.  I find the game very stable and, outside of the occasionally bugged special ability, quite responsive.

Sure it's a valid concern.  But as Heavenfall points out, the beta is out and there's still plenty of time to address these concerns.  I don't think Stardock are planning on releasing a sucky game.

I do agree with you here Renevent.

I do see the beta point.

Very happy they didn't release this officially yet since it seems a real gem in the making.


I can handle crashes and like rough diamonds.

What I didn't had was corrupt saves in WoM. That is something I find sucks the fun out of testing (having not the remotest problem with setting autosave to 1 turn and reloading on crash) but having to play a full of 4 hours again and not having a notification in game that things go wrong with a save / saves in General is a big non-starter for me.
Good thing I didn't expect a stable game to begin with.
So stability-wise WoM was overall more stable for me. Still way more laggy in Performance und much more unfun to play. Less frustrating though because of it (which on the other hand is a good sign for Elemental:FE).

I have no less than 30 games on my computer, this (and the original) are by far the worst offenders.  I have a quad core processor with 4GB ram and a 570GTX with 1.25gb video memory...there is no reason why this game should run poorly other than bugs/optimizations needed/ect.

I'm sure they didn't plan on releasing the original Elemental in the condition it was in...but there it was.  I wouldn't be worried if it weren't for the fact these are the same exact issues I was having with the original game, and it seems I'm not the only one either.  I hope it's just coincidence and I hope it get's sorted...I really REALLY hope so.

FE runs great on my comparitively low-end computer, so I think your concerns are quite valid. Stardock has made it clear in the past that they had to fix compatibility problems but it doesn't sound like that work is complete yet. If they expect to sell the game to a wide range of people, it has to work on a wide range of computers.

I'd say Renevent's concerns are all pretty valid. I my-self am a little worried that some of the memory leaks in E:WoM might make their way into FE. Even on my massively powerful gaming rig on Large and Huge maps in E:WoM starting in turns around 700 to 900 I would start getting OOM crashes and even when loading certain saved games I would only get 10 or 20 turns in before the game would crash again with the same memory issue. This made playing large, epic scale games, very frustrating for me which was doubly bad because those are the types of games I want to set up and play.

So far I haven't had any of these issues in the FE beta yet, but, I also notice even the "Large" map setting seems pretty small to me. I haven't tried setting a custom map size with the XML's yet to see what happens, but when I start sitting down to mod it will be one of the first things I try probably even before I start skinning or setting up a real custom faction.

Hey, the good thing about the game being in beta right now guys: they are more focused than ever on trying to get it right, at this moment.  So this is the time to report those crashes and hope that whatever the weird issue that makes the game run poorly on your computer is, they can fix it. 

Also, not to state the (kinda sorta obvious if you know your computer stuff, but not obvious to those who don't) "obvious", but always make sure your drivers are up to date on video cards, sound cards, etc, etc.  Heck, check for viruses and the like too, some of them can really eat up your systems resources, which will never make a game run better, that's for sure.

I hope they manage to make the game run smoothly for all you out there.

I've heard WoM and FE both have issues running on the newer graphics cards.

Renevant, have you tried adjusting some of the Video options in the Option Menu? I assume you're running the latest graphic drivers.

I'm sure this is quite frustrating! When Elemental's game engine was created, it was designed to run on old machines, but the ironic part is that caused issues on the new stuff (go figure).

Personally, I'd love to Stardock support add some official posts on how to troubleshoot performance issues.

FYI- some of the crashyness is being addressed in the next patch: https://forums.elementalgame.com/415307 . Can't wait until that comes out!

Thanks for the suggestions, though I have tried to adjust settings and drivers are all up to date ect.  I'm actually a Sr. DBA and have been building computers and playing PC games for like 25 years

Well I'll be reporting all the crashes when they let me get into the beta!

I'm confident things can be figured out.

After all, you can't get a metacritic score of 90 with crashy games.

I do sympathize with people with crash problems certainly. I had quite a few problems with cIV initially which were very frustrating. (ATI video card was the problem.) I'm glad I stuck with cIV because it turned out to be one of the best games of all time.

Here's hoping that Stardock has the "sticktoitiveness" and keeps plugging away at the game until it's perfect. Even if that takes a year. I think with Kael in charge, that's realistic. Something about his personality that tells me that's going to happen. (The disturbingly clean desk for one thing. Lol.)

My game doesn't run too great. I too have had memory related crashes when saving, and a few isolated crashes in tactical battles, but that's it. Game runs better that WOM did, but I hope it get's better. If there is more than one city on screen or more than a few units the frame rate drops well bellow 30 which is far less than ideal.

I really hope so. E:Wom worked like crap on my i5 and HD8580. I really hope FE will use my hardware well and give me satisfactory results.

I remember reading that the development team can only test so many hardware compositions and that it was a key function of the beta to do just that, so I'm not sure why people are surprised at this fact...Being all doom and gloom isn't going to help anyone. Assuming that the game engine is that inherently flawed would mean this is all a complete waste of time.

Venting is important, but I think this thread sends the wrong message. The beta has just started.

I think you should take a moment and read what the doom and gloomers (to use your description) are saying a bit closer...I think everyone here is well aware what a beta is considering those who are in the FE beta now are all pre-orders to WoM and were in that beta as well. 

Anyways, I think the thread sends the right message when looking at all this historically.  The notion "it's just a beta!" was said last time too, and the issues (at least the ones I am having) feel all to similar for me to just let go without saying something.  I really don't want to see history repeating itself.