As someone who has been around since the GalCiv I days, I think WOM was a warning sign, which you caught and solved.  The FE beta is looking very promising.  I wouldn't call .77 a great game (yet) , but it is at the quality level I expected WOM 1.01 to be at, before playing the WOM beta.  It's already decent.  (BTW, my standards are kinda ridiculous, so decent is praise, it takes a lot for me to call a game good or great, so don't take it as a slam please).

Personally, I dislike the Ultima IV style.  I don't want to have to take a bunch of notes to get to the gameplay of a game.  I've always wanted my games to let me get to the good stuff quickly.  I prefer elegant designs, like Sirlin's games.   If I buy a game, it's because there's something about the game I want to play.  I don't want to deal with the parts of the game I don't particularly want to play.  Nothing annoys me in a game more then running around in circles.

Some folks like inelegance though, especially in competitive genres, where it serves as a barrier.  Look at the serious and massive flack Sirlin got for his command changes in his SFII remix, which made the game a lot more accessible.  It's why he now does card games (he just put Fantasy Strike Online out of beta last week at fantasystrike.com, I'd recommend looking at it for a fun timewaster- sorry, cheap plug for a designer I like).

 What I'd want to see for Stardock's next "new" IP: Kohan-style RTS set in the Elemental universe.  I see the Elemental universe working great with Kohan-style RTS gameplay, I just see a real potential for something special there.

I agree that FE is what I expected E:WoM 1.01 to be. I think its what a lot of people thought E:WoM 1.01 would be.

Where is the Galactic Civilizations 3? If you want a surefire hit, you already got it. Just use the new engine to make the next Galciv and this time with multiplayer on steam. Instant millions. 

GC3 should be GCII + fixes on the rough spots (which Brad knows where they are)+ Derek's charm/flavor+ MP capability + something new that is well-designed and fits in well to the overall package.    That would be a monster hit.

I'd prefer it to be evolutionary more then revolutionary (but I can always be wrong).

I'm curious at what Stardock could create outside of TBS games.  They seemed to struggle from the change from space TBS to world TBS.  I wonder if they would be able to really create a good AAA game outside of the TBS genre.  A turn based roleplaying game in the Elemental universe would neat.  Although we would probably only have the choice to play a white human as main character as that's all five kingdoms are made of and even one empire.  

Nah, I think you are right about Gal Civ III being evolutionary.

The Elemental revolution is enough revolution for 5 years I think

I think revolutionary is better than evolutionary. What do we remember about a game series? We remember the revolutionary changes in the series. Take the Jagged Alliance series or the X-Com series or even The Elder Scrolls series. What part of these do we remember? The revolutionary changes to the TBS genre for the first two and for the latter we remember the huge, open, and living worlds. I played Skyrim, I kind of liked it; I mean it looked very nice, but it just got old after a while, but I can play the heck out of some Morrowind. No one remembers an evolutionary game, they remember revolutionary games. Change the industry, good luck Brad.

Was Civ 4 revolutionary?  Best game in the series, but not really revolutionary.

Civ 5 was revolutionary.

Revolutionary games are necessary, because you can't just polish a sequel forever, but they're rarely masterpieces.

There's a huge difference in my mind between an RPG like Ultima and a game like Fallen Enchantress. A core game mechanic of ultima was to talk to people in the town to gather information. It would be extremely mechanical and boring if I had to walk on every tile in Elemental to see if there was something of value and then write down which tile it was on in case I had to come back to it. Now make an Elemental RPG and I'll be right in line with you on how an RPG game should be played.

I don't think Civ 4 was the best in the series, or Civ 5. Why do you think we are at a Civ 5? If Civ 1 sucked and no one wanted to play it because it wasn't revolutionary do you think we would be at a Civ 5? No, by far not. Revolutionary games change the industry, evolutionary games don't. It's simple. How did Civ 4 change the industry? The thing that I remember most about Civ 4 is FFH2, I don't even remember vanilla gameplay. 

I'd like to think Morrowind isn't revolutionary ...

Its evolutionary of games like Ultima IV (and Daggerfall, and Arena, and ...)

Morrowind is same gameplay (+some evolution) with better graphics.

On the other hand, games like Elemental:War of Magic, Civilization V, and Motion Sensor games are revolutionary.

Most of the time you just need Originality and Improvements upon the existing ... revolutionary is making something entirely new.

-> while potentially 'evolutionary' its apparent that Elemental took on too many things at once.

-> meanwhile Civ V tried to combine panzer general with Civ III

-> Motion Sensor games are a true revolution ... yet for now we will have to suffer through crap like 'Kinect'

If you look at today's games they are all falling into 2 categories - FPS and Everything else. I mean hell they're trying make a FPS X-Com? Games aren't original anymore, they don't go for original concepts. The only people doing original concepts are indie developers. Why was Minecraft so popular? Because it was something new that we had never seen before and it was the underground thing that very few people knew about. The problem now is that if you have to compete with all the mainstream gaming companies you have to push a game that the masses will like and that involves just rethinking the same of thing over and over until it is so diluted that the games are just the same game with a different look. I like what the Elemental series is trying to do, but it is nothing revolutionary. I mean evolution makes good games, but revolutionary make memorable games. I just think there needs to be a change from the same old same old to something new. 

Elemental war of magic was devolutionary. It tried to do many things old games did in old and/or half-ass ways. 

Well, please don't make the mistake to put people who like documentation, good usability, reduce bookkeeping and features who mitigate human weaknesses (like forgetting things, having a hard time finding things, not least thanks to language barrier ect.) and who hate if designers go gotcha on them with "finger-pointing, haha" mechanics (or even no notification at all of a show-stopper leaving a player scratching its head) in the same basket as people who like easy or dumbed down or incomplex games.

For example:
I for one hate dead ends/showstoppers as a game mechanic or silly combinations of things which make no sense whatsoever and end up in a click- and combine-fest. (One of the reasons why I could never find big affection to Adventure games, even the really good ones like the old Lugasfilm games except maybe Loom... )

I'm firmly a player who wouldn't suffer having to graph down my own maps for example (for times sake alone that would make it impossible for me to indulge in such an experience) thanks to starting gaming in earnest during the mid-nineties when such things were about to be overcome mostly and never getting used to it. (Not an issue today thanks to the Internet even when looking at old classics. Meaning Games from the early nineties and before)

I do have to say that certain things like text-based games have a certain appeal to them (even I can feel) thanks to leaving lots of things open for imagination so I can understand a certain appeal  to games with lots of holes in spite of what I wrote above. At least conceptually (even though I wouldn't like graping my own maps). So I think that is another layer yet again.


Graphics as long as they don't hurt my retina (CGA pink palette I'm talking about you... ) are nigh on irrelevant to me (and from VGA on there is plenty of proof that its a question of how the the graphic designers work with the tools given to them not only what tools they had. At least for 2D, not to much fussed about 3D). Sound can be disabled / replaced (feeling a growing disconnect with gaming magazines here for about a decade, possibly longer...).

But I very much like difficult and deep / complex games (Like Civ 4, Arcanum, FFH2 ect.). If only I had more time...


I do expect a certain user-friendliness (pathfinding in Morrowind was a huge turnoff not least thanks to the language barrier back then from an otherwise stellar game) and a running game if I meet the recommended specs though and like good documentation and usability features. I do like polished games and working systems.
There is plenty of examples that the 2 things are not by default contradictory.

Short synopsis of the above would be: please make the game hard within an interesting and working game-system and not by making the system hard to use and you got the groundwork covered in my book. (I did like Icewind Dale 2 quite a bit.).


Gameplay / content / fun is very much important though (easily top priority, I have even seen the value of certain adventures and other genres in spite of not liking said genres in General).


Elemental WoM and its development as a game is a good example of the above in a single Game:

When it came out the Gameplay had some really interesting Ideas to it but mechanically / from a systemic view was rather broken / incoherent. Still fun for a few hours but certainly not up to the hype.
After streamlining it went mechanically more robust while the content / fun was lost.
Both versions had terrible documentation, questionable stability and lacked a common vision.
Couldn't keep my attention for long enough to finish a game even though I tried.


With FE Beta 1 you have nailed alot of what I like about games (and the tutorial looked executed rather nicely.) while avoiding the pitfalls.




Take OSs for an (if inacurate) comparison: Who would like Win 7 Size and recource intensivity with the features and usability of Win 3.11?
That doesn't mean people who like Win 7 don't like to tinker or use the advanced Features of an OS (at least eventually).



So I do think newer mainstream and even some (possibly lots) of the older more niche gamers do have aquired raised expectaions in terms of usability, documentation and weakness-mitigation over the years.

Not sure I can agree that the majority of gamers actually likes dumbed down / simplicity (or at least even with gamers who do I have seen lots in both PNP, board-gaming and PC/console games actually grow out of it / develop their own preferences).
I certainly have heard countless developers preach that its the way to go and execute it in their design (possibly )...
Luckily not for Stardock so far.
Not sure the breed of niche gamers who like complex games is in any way getting numerically smaller (surely having a smaller share of the market. But is that a bad thing by necessity as long as there is still a growing population of such gamers / will to develop games for them ect...?)
I remember spore as the personal most disappointing game buying it with nigh on 0 expectation and still getting hugely disappointed by it. (not being a tinkerer myself I wasn't that invested in the modding tools were it might have been stellar. can't judge that. As a game when released it was abysmal, barring the cell-stage.). That is a glorious example of a highly interesting and working system devoid of fun gameplay and actual content and dumbed down into Oblivion (not taliking the game here )...

But then gamers are a diverse bunch.
You "just" need to catch enough gamers who actually pay for a game to make the game financially viable (and of course hope for some more ) roughly in what they like and there is room for the game to succeed. Get enough right and you'll have a huge fanbase and a hit.
Add lots of effort, sweat, time and polish and luck on top of that and you might get a classic (there is no guarantee for that last one. Even the most stellar games can be overlooked in the time of their release. Don't try to aim for Classic... There are factors in that which are out of anyone gamestudios control).
Unless the shareholders are breathing down your neck... (That last one doesn't seem to apply to you luckily. Better not talk about it much more than that. Sad topic from a perspective of someone who likes well-polished and stellar TBS...)

So I don't share your pessimism. Neither for FE which seems coming along nicely nor for the games we seem to like (Probably I share my likes with a substantial part of the population of this forum, I reckon.).


There is always Blizzard as an example of a highly successful Studio able to make very polished systems appealing to a wide variety of gamers without dividing or dumbing down overmuch. Certainly not easy to acheive. Proof that its not impossible to even do appeal to both casuals and dedicated gamers in the same games.

The thing I love the most about stardock are it's fans.  

We know the hard work that went into Elemental, the game just never got its legs, maybe just a matter of too many concepts too wide a vision.  In the earliest betas with the over powered champions and deranged monsters it had glimpses of being fun, but not the level of polish they we rabid fans of you guys and gals are used to.

But I can tell you this much, FE the 1st beta was fun, not the I think its sort of fun but change a lot of it kind either.  It was fun as in I enjoyed playing through it twice and can't wait for more of it fun.    Like one of the other posters said, this was a set back for a great company - FE is one heck of a proper response.