To Brad - The Customer's Blood Pact

from Elemental Forums

Brad, I've been harsh to you in the past, but I'm "on your side" now. I want the game to deliver and I want Stardock to get merit for it. But it's not there yet, and something you said in another discussion made me decide to post this.

You said you wanted a 90+ score for FE. You said there's no release date. Yet you're not ready to dramatically "overhaul" mechanics at this point. Which makes sense, I get it, even from a financial perspective: even FE will have to be released sooner or later. So I propose this, and I'm totally serious. People who preordered EWoM, like me, are technically entitled to 2 free expansions. You've been true to your word so far, and I'm already getting FE "for free."

This is what I say now. Deliver to us the game we expected one year and half ago, and your "debt" to me and others who think like me is repaid. We'll forget about the delay. No need for another free expansion if the game does what it was meant to do in the first place. You've shown us professional integrity, let us show customer integrity. Put a button on the forum or something when FE is released, and you'll see that if FE delivers, many of us will be ready to push it.

That said, on to the points that I feel need discussion:

  •  City building. Most of the feedback seems to point out that the system doesn't deliver on almost any level. Now, it may be that the "tweaking" you propose will change that. I'm not ruling that out. But it might also be that you and your team just went too far with the streamlining. Right now, it seems to me that you've almost killed one of the most engrossing parts of a 4x game. Many on the forum seem to agree. Professional reviewers might have issues with this as well.

 

  • Performance. I haven't tried 0.76 yet, I just tried to load a game and it still takes forever. And this isn't even the worst part. I'll stop my current game and I'll start a new one to keep testing because my PC can't handle the mid-game. I have a 3.4 GHz quadcore. Now, testing is one thing, but sooner or later, hopefully, I will want to play a game to its conclusion. Right now it doesn't seem possible, not without feeling the need to throw the PC out of the window. Again, I don't think reviewers would take kindly on an issue like not being able to complete a game because it drags you down to a crawl.

 

  • AI. Ok, it's been said many times. I've had fun with my first game, as I took my sovereign and had fun discovering things, exploring the world, picking my battles. Yes, I said "picking" my battles. No one went after me. No one did absolutely nothing to challenge me. It's easy to predict that, in subsequent games, the AI's absence will start to become an issue. Professional reviewers will notice this too. Now, I know it's been worked on and all, but please don't underestimate this. Put more people on it if necessary. They might bring a different approach to things and complete your work in non-obvious ways.

 

  • Other things. Too many to list here: just keep reading the feedback. Some of the posters are giving amazing thoughts and ideas. Take them seriously.

Ok, this is what I wanted to say. Hope you and your great guys will take the "criticism" in the right way  :)

18,168 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Just to be clear: I'm not the designer on FE.  I've expressed only my own opinions on things like city building and such.

Let me respond to your specific points:

1. I can't discuss much on the city building part because this is one of the areas that a lot of work is going into.  It will become more clear in beta 2.

2. I agree with you on performance.  For 0.76 I re-did the load save game code so that it takes less than 30 seconds to load rather than 3 minutes. The problem has to do with how cities are loaded in saved games which I've since reworked.

That said, this is only one instance of where performance is on our mind. Frame rate is something we are very focused on optimizing, especially late game.  It's a non-trivial issue since every unit in the game can have its own unique equipment and there ends up being hundreds of units. But we are working on this part so that it is high performing on a wide variety of hardware configurations.

3. It is pointless to worry about AI in beta 1.  I won't be implementing any real strategies into it until beta 2. It would be a waste of time to do so at this point since I have to know what techs, items, spells, and units matter the most.

What people can do to help with AI is talk specifically about how they're playing the game and how they win.  I can beat the AI in less than 100 turns on a small map on normal right now. I can write code to counter what I do.  But the ideal solution is for everyone to write how they play the game.  AARs are remarkably helpful.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok, I take your word about the AI. If it's not there, it's doing great right now.

The game has a good foundation this time around. I don't agree with all the choices but in a way you could say that it already is a success, since modders seem able to do a lot with it, and indeed they're already at work on truly amazing things. So, player side, it looks good.  Performance and AI are the only things that could "ruin the party" at this point. Performance needs a dramatic improvement. So basically I'm just saying, don't let the guard down now.  ;)

Oh, and my proposal stands  :)

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I will try to post more ways to win. There are alot and most of them get blood on my helmet. 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

 

"But the ideal solution is for everyone to write how they play the game.  AARs are remarkably helpful."

 

It will be a pleasure to upload to Stardock a "debug file" that would save the progress of a game, from all parameters, for all turns and let you analyse how I win or I loose game.

 

Doing all the writing by myself,  would be too much time...  taking all the time to everybody...  counterproductive.  1 debug class,  that save our progression to let you know how we beat the game,  should be great. 

 

Jourdelune

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Brad, I've been harsh to you in the past, but I'm "on your side" now. I want the game to deliver and I want Stardock to get merit for it. But it's not there yet, and something you said in another discussion made me decide to post this.

You said you wanted a 90+ score for FE. You said there's no release date. Yet you're not ready to dramatically "overhaul" mechanics at this point. Which makes sense, I get it, even from a financial perspective: even FE will have to be released sooner or later. So I propose this, and I'm totally serious. People who preordered EWoM, like me, are technically entitled to 2 free expansions. You've been true to your word so far, and I'm already getting FE "for free."

This is what I say now. Deliver to us the game we expected one year and half ago, and your "debt" to me and others who think like me is repaid. We'll forget about the delay. No need for another free expansion if the game does what it was meant to do in the first place. You've shown us professional integrity, let us show customer integrity. Put a button on the forum or something when FE is released, and you'll see that if FE delivers, many of us will be ready to push it.

That said, on to the points that I feel need discussion:


 City building. Most of the feedback seems to point out that the system doesn't deliver on almost any level. Now, it may be that the "tweaking" you propose will change that. I'm not ruling that out. But it might also be that you and your team just went too far with the streamlining. Right now, it seems to me that you've almost killed one of the most engrossing parts of a 4x game. Many on the forum seem to agree. Professional reviewers might have issues with this as well.
 


Performance. I haven't tried 0.76 yet, I just tried to load a game and it still takes forever. And this isn't even the worst part. I'll stop my current game and I'll start a new one to keep testing because my PC can't handle the mid-game. I have a 3.4 GHz quadcore. Now, testing is one thing, but sooner or later, hopefully, I will want to play a game to its conclusion. Right now it doesn't seem possible, not without feeling the need to throw the PC out of the window. Again, I don't think reviewers would take kindly on an issue like not being able to complete a game because it drags you down to a crawl.
 


AI. Ok, it's been said many times. I've had fun with my first game, as I took my sovereign and had fun discovering things, exploring the world, picking my battles. Yes, I said "picking" my battles. No one went after me. No one did absolutely nothing to challenge me. It's easy to predict that, in subsequent games, the AI's absence will start to become an issue. Professional reviewers will notice this too. Now, I know it's been worked on and all, but please don't underestimate this. Put more people on it if necessary. They might bring a different approach to things and complete your work in non-obvious ways.
 


Other things. Too many to list here: just keep reading the feedback. Some of the posters are giving amazing thoughts and ideas. Take them seriously.
Ok, this is what I wanted to say. Hope you and your great guys will take the "criticism" in the right way 
End of quote

I'm certainly glad you don't speak for ME or anyone else. Give up my 2nd free expansion? Not on your life buster BOY. I paid $80 for this GD game an I expect to be compensated for the craptastic version we got in the beginning. I await my 2nd free expansion with open and EXPECTING arms. ;_)

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

80$ ? I don't remember it was this expensive.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting EvilMaxWar, reply 6
80$ ? I don't remember it was this expensive.
End of EvilMaxWar's quote

Maybe he bought the CE version?  

 

Now, I also want my second game too.  It's one of those things that I didn't feel entitled to when it was offered, and thought it was overly generous when Brad made that announcement.  And I did think that WoM was pretty bad.  But that's what makes Stardock special.  And with all that being said, I want my second game too now.  I'm poor.  

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Chill down guys.

I wrote this as soon as it begun to surface that despite the many, many improvements, there are still a few but deep enough issues with the game. Since I realized that re-thinking from scratch even just a few areas of the game would be MAJOR work at this point, I thought that if Stardock were ready to go as far as to do it anyway, a honest, comparable response from the audience would have been fitting. 

Anyway, I admit that since it has been clearly stated that the game's structure is fairly set, I've lost my enthusiasm myself. I'm sure I'll have fun with the game but I'm also sure it won't be groundbreaking.  I do trust that some spectacular mods will be released, though.