pacov

If the head of the company is using terms like "cockup" - well, for 1, I love the guy.  2 - they are offering refunds if you are disgusted with them (honestly, you kinda should be, but fair enough).  3 - just leave it be - come back to it in a month, even if its your super favoritest game on earth.  I'm pretty sure they will do everything in their power to sort it. 

After dealing with the excitement with Demigod, I can say I'm glad I stuck with the game and love it - but frankly, I'd have been much less annoyed if I just waited a bit for things to get better and then dove in. 

Commentary - here's what I don't get - companies release games that are in shite state.  Now honestly, if you believe these guys released this game knowing it was a piece of crap, then you should not buy from them again.  PERIOD.  But if you believe they just didn't know it was a piece of crap... well, that's another story.  That's my take on elemental.  I'm completely confident that SD felt they were releasing a solid game when they launched.  I personally am 100% sure that if Brad thought the game was a POS, he would have not launched it even if it meant a loss of money or looking stupid or whatever.  That said, if these guys are in the same boat, then I say support them.  If they are crapheads that decided to just release it because they needed to meet some bottom line (eg suckers that buy the game retail before reading any reviews), then screw them. 

The real story, though, is that companies like Kerberos and Stardock need better practices in place to ensure that games are solid on multiple platforms BEFORE release and they need to be held accountable.  Brad - if you don't have a QA setup using intel/amd and nvidia/ati setups... well shame on you.  And the QA should cover win7 and win XP (dual boot or multiple boxes).  That's how QA should happen.  Anyway, fingers crossed for Fallen Enchantress.  I really hope it won't have any of the issues that were present in Elemental. 

And last - I really do love both companies.  I really want the best for them and for both companies to release solid games and be highly profitable.  I just am sick of seeing "cockups."

To be fair, that's not what he was doing on day 1. It was actually a lot like WoM in that way. Some denial, and then "uh oh, it really is screwed up." That's when the apology came out. Initially they were just banning people on the Kerberos forums who complained.

It really hurt in Demigod's case because the game itself is really good. The botched launch hurt it's long term viability though.

 

We saw what happened with Stardock where they got too wrapped up in their own work and didn't have anybody at 5000 feet above it to say "hey guys, WTF?" That's a risk when you self-publish.

In this case? Paradox's job as the publisher is to step in and say "no this is not release worthy". They failed, as Paradox ALWAYS does. Depending on who you believe Kerberos either just lost sight of it or had to release due to lack of money. Paradox has no such problem and this debacle ultimately rests on them.

If I was running Paradox, I'd be setting up one of my own QA guys to look at every project and empower them to put the brakes on a launch when it's this far from being ready. That's the only way to improve their reputation as a publisher that throws anything out the door.

I'm a huge fan of SOTS. If you haven't played it, go buy that and enjoy.

SOTS ][, unfortunately, was released in what I'd call early-beta condition. If you haven't already purchased it, I'd advise you to wait a couple months and buy it around Christmas. It certainly has the outlines of a good game, but it's still buggy and feature incomplete.

OTOH, it you player SOTS prime and want to make sure Kerberos has the cash to finish the development of ][, go ahead and buy it, just do so realizing that you're financing the creation of the game you want (a la Minecraft) rather than purchasing it.

This I believe is the truth. I could go into descriptions of likely what, why, and how but I don't feel that it would be beneficial. I honestly believe that they took the actions they took, knowing they would have to bite the bullet of the pr nightmare, because they had absolutely no other option. Poor management aside, that's likely how it stands.

They've got the money flowing in, they've commented that they understand if you want a refund but that they will indeed 'feel' you voting with your dollars. They have enough capital now, hopefully with the patches they can get things back to the way it ought to be.

Finished downloading SotS II during the night and just started it to see what it looked like, and it looks just like SotS on the surface.

SotS is a deep game with TONS of customization and features so hope more people buy V-2 and give the game a chance.

Does the game play only in Windowed mode, not fullscreen? (Option button is grayed out at the moment).

full screen is Alt-Enter

You should be used to dozens of undocumented hotkeys from SotS

I think today's update is in replacement of Fridays. 

That's what their twitter said at least. 

Amusingly, I dropped by here after saying half-jokingly to myself, "I know, I'll distract myself from the state of SOTS by checking in on how Elemental is doing. That'll put things in perspective!"

Pre-purchased (didn't I learn from Elemental? Well, at least I didn't buy a collectors edition..) and downloaded, even upgraded my system to Win7 just so I could play it. And it was completely broken. I was able to push buttons and make ships and fly around, but anything meaningful was either not fully implemented or suffered CTD bugs.

But! The update and two patches that have come out since release day have given me something playable, though not terribly fun. But at this point I can see the shape of a game that I'll obsess over as much as I did the original. Everything's a bit buggy and slow to respond, and whole subsystems (civilian trade, diplomacy) are shut off pending rebalancing, but what's there is a lot of fun being held back by bugs and crashes. Quite a contrast to Elemental, which I found to be fundamentally broken underneath all the bugs (though I still hold out hope for FE!)

The latest update fixed some of the long lag time switching screens, and improved the performance, but much still needs to be done. The Free DLC is there, but not activated yet (greyed out in the menu), There is still missing content (barren planet textures missing so you just see a black ball), and missing features.

SotS 1 was about as rocky of a launch as SotS 2 at first as well, but as it was polished up through the patches it became quite enjoyable. I am expecting the same with SotS 2.

BTW SotS, and Sins do not compare. Its Apples, and Oranges.

Just picked up Sword of the Stars: Complete Collection. Got it imported from the UK via a seller on www.amazon.com

Installed and still loving it like I did before. When the kinks get worked out on SotSII I'll likely give it a shot.

So how does the game look now?

I was hoping to be working on Rebellion by now, but since that's going to take some time, I was thinking of picking this game up.  I never played the original, but only have so much time, so I'll put my duckits in this bucket if it's decent.

Thanks for any input!

They've fixed all the critical things and hang-ups and have re-enabled a lot of content. It plays like a game now but they're still not at where they should've been at launch. In the coming month there will be a couple huge patches that actually complete the game (and lord forbid, start to balance it). At least, that's the schedule. With the way they put out fast and furious updates the last two months, I'm pretty sure they'll have it in good working order by the end of January. It is fun to play, but I'm waiting for everything to be finished (government, psionics, AI, etc.) before really engrossing myself.