diamondspider

diamondspider

Joined Member # 2407514
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Reply to The Middle Market is not dying in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

Well said!! I think that your use of the term "casual gamer" is a bit harsh here. The fact is, this forum is filled with folks that are pretty hardcore, and there is a lot ot gray space between hardcore and casual. Most COD gamers are not casual gamers, but are also very far from hardcore. For us minority here, yes, middle games are often preferred. I still haven't finished Dragon Age 1, and with a big gaming budget don't even want DA2, but I just picked up Might and Magic 7 fro

95 Replies 471,671 Views
Reply to PC Games Examiner Interview with Brad Wardell in Elemental News Stardock Forums

The controvery around DD pricing isn't so much about the savings on box, DVD, and manual, it's about the overhead needed for a brick and mortar store, inventory holding costs, and many other issues that make up the margin between the typical cost of each product and what it has been sold for. That is why digital distribution should be substantially less than the classic approach, not so much the box and such.

19 Replies 27,532 Views
Reply to Drama Cleansing Thread in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

Well... nice that you took some responsibility, but oddly, you focused almost entirely on the crashing issues, and little or not at all on the UI and balance issues. I believe you said something like "didn't live up to customer expectations". From this, I assume that having a UI where a lone sov comes into my territory when we are at war and destroys his entire empire when I attack him with a small stack is up to YOUR expectations. Ironically, I had little or no problems with an

323 Replies 1,271,389 Views
Reply to Neoseeker’s Elemental: War of Magic Review in Elemental News Stardock Forums

I see several feeling the game is 6/10... I can't even give it a 4/10 at this point. Brad himself said it's mostly intended to be a single player game, and it's just too easy to beat it. I've hardly ever even lost an army in this game, much less ever felt challenged. If the goal of the game is to give a challenging singleplayer experience, for me, it currently doesn't do that at all. Sadly, it will have to be shelved until the AI is smarter than a 2 year old who was slipped a bo

98 Replies 102,012 Views
Reply to Fixing Tactical Combat in War of Magic Stardock Forums

Here's my suggested formula to put bell curves in: (random(attack/3)+random(attack/3)+random(attack/3) MINUS (random(defense/3)+random(defense/3)+random(defense/3) That gives a nice bell, easy to implement, and takes the insane luck factor out of this game so that I'd actually do things like USE the 25% defense increase in some terrain, knowing there's a good chance it might make an actual difference.

12 Replies 15,355 Views
Reply to Elemental: Launch-Week Status Report in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

I come down on the side of "prefer fixed maps with fixed resource locations". I've already had several games effectively ruined by being put close to up to 4 gold mines to start... then walk a few feet away and see 3 clustered tech libraries? I do agree there'd have to be at least about 20 very well balanced maps, ideally quite a few more, to make this not become boring fast. The alturnative is to have a very complicated map generator that sprinkled the resources around in a ver

150 Replies 498,923 Views
Reply to My list of quirks with the game in War of Magic Stardock Forums

I guess it is true if you want to run a melee sov.... I use mine for a taxi cab mostly and pump his essence--since I do 15 charisma, I always have tones of champs to do me melee dirty work for me... I don't like my sov being melee simply because he has better things to do than risk himself to the huge random number variance. If I did want to make a melee sov, I agree that having to invest a good bit into Con would be annoying as I'd be wanting to put it into attack. Then again, better weapons

11 Replies 10,783 Views
Reply to My list of quirks with the game in War of Magic Stardock Forums

Why would I not build giants and elementals? They don't cost anything other than putting a measely 5 points into essence at the start (or after leveling) in my soveign and building a few arcane labs. Also, as I said, the stuff levels up very quickly if you want it to, and it's rigged so Con is the best thing to take usually in melee champs. Obviously, if you refuse to put points into Con, you'll have to settle for fairly low HP units (you do get a nice boost from leveling anyways... su

11 Replies 10,783 Views
Reply to [1.06] Hedgie's Strategic/Tactic Monster/Sov AI Flawlist in War of Magic Stardock Forums

Turn 99 on ridiculous... Magnar finally starts giving me a little problem with lost of stacks of 3 guys with boar spears vs. my elite broadsword +2 heavy plate infantry (yes, his units are stronger with exactly 1 upgrade vs my 8 in warfare). I take and can barely hold one city he took from Capitar (my ally), brigands nearly wipe my army out with a stoke of bad luck where they actually did attack a city... getting exciting... ...Magnar himself walks up this city I took&

6 Replies 4,510 Views
Reply to My list of quirks with the game in War of Magic Stardock Forums

I personally don't find health to be too low. That might be because the AI is so easy though. Leveling up is fast, and putting points in to Con allows rapid health gains. Giants and Elementals are also very easy to get. Troops are fairly cheap. Between all of those things, I get a killer stack early (usually by about turn 30 or sooner). At that point, I cut through everything and health feels too high. It does start low though, and so I have to be careful.. although running away is rea

11 Replies 10,783 Views
Reply to [1.06] Hedgie's Strategic/Tactic Monster/Sov AI Flawlist in War of Magic Stardock Forums

Yup... tip of the iceburg of the AI problems, even in ridiculous difficulty. Considering the number of creatures on the map, having them all constantly attacking may or may not be fun, but they very rarely attack, and certainly never intelligently. What creatures usually will attack, is much weaker stacks that are next to them... EXCEPT I've seen several cases of solo pioneer units from enemy factions walk right by monsters without ever being attacked. So, not only is the

6 Replies 4,510 Views
Reply to Elemental v1.06 Released (now with 100% more hotfix!) in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

New game and about 100 turns in. Certainly looking better. -After taking an indie city, still getting the "will grow when population reaches 0" bug. -Sounds still drop out on nearly everything (SFX) after a few hours of play. -Can do trade treaties still without purchasing the tech for it. -Rolling over icons in a monster stack still doesn't show monster cards right. Looking a lot better!

208 Replies 375,739 Views
Reply to Elemental v1.06 Released (now with 100% more hotfix!) in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

[quote who="Twohawks" comment="97"](no feature lock yet)this game will never have a feature lock.. They may get tired of changing things or not implement some things because of game vision but with Stardock.. When they or we come up with a new idea they like they will implement it.. at at least that's how they do with the games the design themselves heh heh[/quote] It takes a little discipline, but it's not hard to take the good ideas that you really want to implement, and put th

208 Replies 375,739 Views
Reply to Elemental v1.06 Released (now with 100% more hotfix!) in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

[quote who="jhwisner" comment="93"]...That's why I favor auto-reporting crashes and asking for optional tester input in terms of describing what they were doing and in what what the program blew up. It's easier on the testers since they don't have to waste time pointing out a bug that's already been fixed or posting in a forum- only for the devs to respond asking for clarification from a tester who never notices the request for more information... [/quote] Yup. I've been a

208 Replies 375,739 Views
Reply to Elemental v1.06 Released (now with 100% more hotfix!) in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

The beta test wasn't even a beta test. I was in it, and they never let us test the actual game: only various small portions of it in isolation. I gave up even giving feedback, as all of the systems in the game are so strategically interconnected that commenting on one area without taking the others into account were nearly meaningless. Further, I tend to wait until I can see the whole game before even reporting bugs... the reason is that when something is still effectively in alpha (no

208 Replies 375,739 Views
Reply to Elemental v1.06 Released (now with 100% more hotfix!) in Elemental Dev Journals Stardock Forums

I'm zooming in and out all the time, looking at cities much of the time zoomed about halfway out... I rarely use cloth map, and rarely zoom all the way in. I'm not even sure how to check my frame rate, but when I freshly load a game, it seems everything runs as I'd think it should. Note that even with 6GB, I do see memory leaks slowing things down in tactical combat after a while (not to mention dropping particles, sound effects, and such). I don't consider those problems performance i

208 Replies 375,739 Views