Welcome to the public beta

By Frogboy on January 19, 2012 11:48:42 AM from

Greetings!

It has been a long time. But the day of the public beta for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress has finally arrived.

How you will get it

If you were part of the original beta (pre-ordered the game) the game will automatically be added to your Stardock account this afternoon around 3pm EST. At that point, you can go to http://download.stardock.com to download and install it.

What is in the beta?

The beta includes an interactive tutorial plus the full sandbox game.

What are we looking for in this beta?

First and foremost, bugs. Specifically, video and sound related ones. And crashes. We always want to hear about crashes. In addition, we are interested in your suggestions to improve the game particularly in areas of user interface and game balance.

How are along is this beta?

It’s pretty far. The version you will be receiving is version 0.75. That said, there are a long list of known issues with it that you will likely notice immediately. For starters, you will likely see graphical glitches like this. It’s known and should be fixed by the first update which will be next Thursday.

What should you do if you have a problem?

If you run into a problem, like a game crash there will be a file in your \programdata\stardock\elemental – fallen enchantress direcotry. It’ll be a ZIP file which will contain a debug.err (always helpful) and a crash dump file. Send that to us at [email protected] subject: Fallen Enchantress report.

Also, if you have some sort of issue like even getting the game to start or something, in your \documents\my games\stardock\fallenenchantress directory will be the most recent debug.err. That will tell us all kinds of information about your system that we can use to troubleshoot.

How about those who want to get into the beta?

We will be gradually adding more people to the beta in the coming weeks. Eventually, anyone who bought Elemental: War of Magic in 2010 or earlier will get Elemental: Fallen Enchantress for free. Users who purchased War of Magic in 2011 will get a discount that they can use to purchase Fallen Enchantress and join the beta. For everyone else, we plan to open the doors completely in a few weeks.

We are very excited to hear what you think. There is no NDA on this so you are free to give your impressions (good or bad) as you see fit. We hope you like what we’ve done here. Let us know!

For new users: Here are our Survival Tips!

Screenshots:

+912 Karma | 100 Replies

Been playing now for about 30 minutes. Seems Very Awesome . I can't wait to start modding in some better skins though. Also, for some reason, I found a chick who joined me but she won't mary me. I don't even see the option. Can we still get married and have kids and stuff?

Quoting RavenX,

reply 76

Can we still get married and have kids and stuff?

No, dynasties have been removed.

Quoting Cauldyth,

reply 77

Quoting RavenX, reply 76Can we still get married and have kids and stuff?

No, dynasties have been removed.

What? Seriously? Man....I should have stayed active more and known stuff like this. That's pretty damn crappy imo. That was one of the best things about Elemental. I hope that's reconsidered. If not, maybe we can mod it back in. (I hope)

Aside from just finding out I can't get married and have kids FE is pretty cool.

Quoting RavenX,

reply 78

Some unknown portion of us middle-aged and old-guard folks are still hoping that the first FE expansion will bring back the dynasty mechanics in some form or another. I'd be happy to see the 'champion farm' part of the old mechanics lost if we could at least still have arranged marriages as part of the diplomacy system.

Well, not entirely happy. Given my past hopes for the dynasty mechanics, I still faintly hope that any FE expansion stuff about dynasties would give players choices between using dynastic offspring as major units on the battlefield, as valuable commodities in diplomacy, or as 'champions at home' that provide bonuses to cities or the entire realm depending on where they're stationed.

Quoting GW Swicord,

reply 79

Quoting RavenX, reply 78What? Seriously? Man....I should have stayed active more and known stuff like this. That's pretty damn crappy imo. That was one of the best things about Elemental. I hope that's reconsidered. If not, maybe we can mod it back in. (I hope)

Some unknown portion of us middle-aged and old-guard folks are still hoping that the first FE expansion will bring back the dynasty mechanics in some form or another. I'd be happy to see the 'champion farm' part of the old mechanics lost if we could at least still have arranged marriages as part of the diplomacy system.

Well, not entirely happy. Given my past hopes for the dynasty mechanics, I still faintly hope that any FE expansion stuff about dynasties would give players choices between using dynastic offspring as major units on the battlefield, as valuable commodities in diplomacy, or as 'champions at home' that provide bonuses to cities or the entire realm depending on where they're stationed.

Agreed. I'd like to see the Dynasty system return before then if possible, in any kind of iteration honestly. The Dynasty system in WoM was one of the few aspects where the game said "Hey, I'm Not just a bad MoM knock off, I'm unique."....and now it's gone. It was one of the best and better defining aspects of WoM aside from the few ways it could be abused. Dynasties should have just been tweaked to prevent abuse but left in the game as a whole. I'm not pleased with this, not one bit.

FE is still a pretty awesome game so far and there are some vast improvements over WoM, that's not in doubt. I do think though these gains could have been gotten without hacking whole systems out of the WoM design

Been playing for 7 hours now. So far my only complaint is that cities have no real threat and one can thus turtle too easily. And since all strategic spells have to cast within one's borders you can nuke anything that comes at you. I would like to see some lairs spring up in neutral areas or something to prevent me from steamrolling and razing my way across the map.

But in case no one has said anything, the game is awesome so far. I am having so much fun I turned down a free dinner and a movie so I could stay home and finish my reign of terror. I always get such a gleeful giggle out of choosing gallows for my city bonus.

Yes, also wanted to register my feedback for bringing back the dynasty system. I get the focused approach to the game play and are glad to see the team focusing on things that make the game fun. But imo dynasties were alot of fun, so I hope that is a feature the team considers adding back in.

FrogBoy, just wondering, for those who get elemental FoE for free, do we get it in steam for free or we get it in GameStop? When the game fully released.

I haven't been back to a Stardock site in probably a year, and I haven't played a Stardock game, other than Elemental, in probably two.

I don't know how long I'll stay, but this statement made me really re-consider things:

Elemental: War of Magic was a game we had very high hopes for. Unfortunately, it was a disappointment both to us, as well as to many of our customers. Stardock's success in its nineteen years of existence has been because people know if they buy something with our name on it, it'll be excellent. With Elemental: War of Magic we failed that expectation.

I felt like Stardock's treatment of WoM was awful, and Brad's initial reaction of anger toward those with criticisms was unforgivable. The admission of failure in this case is quite possibly the only thing that could have brought me back. Yes, I like shiny free things, but without the "we screwed up" statements I doubt I would have cared.

I appreciate the freebie here (downloading now, but my DSL is fairly slow), and seeing this kind of public statement makes me think that perhaps Stardock and I can have a future together

I'm at work now... and I have this big button FULL BETA download staring at me.

Still 5 more hours to go.

Nice atmosphere so far. The game feels way more done and complete already in the beta.

One issue I had so far was however that I got a report about to elarn a new since technology but started already a battle at that point. Because of that teh system got totally conused and finally ended the battle out of nowhere and I was unable to use any controls at all.

Aside from the beta CTDs and freezeups, a much more enjoyable experience than WOM. The treasures are better, the quests more interesting and the tactical battles much improved.

I like the feel of things very much. The UI took me a very minutes to get used to. It felt a little off (eg not intuitive initially), but I was literally very comfortable after like 5 minutes.

I took my time with the tutorial. I very much like the presentation and how you fellas chose to do things here. The videos were great and covered what mattered. I also like how if I couldn't figure out what to do next, I could just click the top middle of the screen to go back to the video.

One thing in the tutorial was when I had to go fight that lava monster of whatever it was. I might be remembering this wrong, but I thought it said that I had to go to the western woods to fight it. From where I was located, it was actually the woods to the east and it took me a bit to figure out where it was. I was playing at the default zoom and for whatever reason, didn't see the creature appear initially - so I didn't know where it was at that zoom level. Anyway, might be something to tweak in the tutorial. Other than that, it was really well done and super easy to follow and understand the basic concepts.

After the tutorial. I played my 1st game. The game ended maybe 100 turns in due to a crash to desktop when I was clicking on a space to move. Generally speaking, I like the presentation a lot. I think the quests are going to take some getting used to, though. I'm not really all that excited about the UI for the dialog based quests. Just feels kind of clunky. I like how things are written though. I immediately thought "this is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book." So, I enjoyed reading through them. Then I ended up summoning some completely badass enemies that messed me up to no end based on my decisions. This makes me wonder about the questing system. I'm hoping that the quests themselves can have random outcomes - eg if I make the same decisions, the same thing won't necessarily happen. I'm sure you'll write more than a few quests, but I think it would suck to repeat any of them so that I knew what the outcome would be in advance if they are static.

One other thing - I don't know how important it is to have defensive units in my city. I assume it is. This might be something good to add to and mention in the tutorial.

Anyway, I only had time for the tutorial and one play through yesterday (the curse of SWTOR). I really like the atmosphere and what you've done with the game engine. Downloading and registering the game was easy. The install seemed a little hard on my hard drive, but I was multitasking up a storm, so perhaps no big deal there at all.

I already own Elemental WoM , but Fallen Enchantress isn't listed on my account page .

I'd really like to see dynasties appear again at some point as well. Always thought it was a cool idea at the very least.

Dynasty can be turned on in the XML. It is just set to not be there by default since it is not a core feature.

Fallen enchantress isn't showing up in my downloads either, and I have preordered and was in the beta.
I hope it's there soon, so I get to test it this week-end!

Isn't showing up here either =3

Quoting Chirmaya,

reply 93

Isn't showing up here either =3

Go to the link at the top post. I didn't see it through Impulse, but logging into Stardock website, I got it.

Yeah, looking on the webpage, but not beta version for download

Same no FE beta for me I pre-ordered and have had the game since 2011, actually got a boxed set from stardock.

Quoting Chirmaya,

reply 95

Yeah, looking on the webpage, but not beta version for download

Got answer from support about same problem. Waiting ...

The beta is currently being released to people who purchased the game from August 24th 2010 - October 31st 2010
You purchased your game on 12/15/2010 you will have access to the beta later on.

plang75015, Chirmaya, and Haldain, check again, it should be on your accounts:

http://download.stardock.com/

Quoting pacov,

reply 90

I'd really like to see dynasties appear again at some point as well. Always thought it was a cool idea at the very least.

pleaseeee

so far i played the game for about 30min-1hr and i don't like that the dynasty was removed that was a great feature in WOM. i havent encountered any bugs yet but will pay closer attention.

where to improve:

-dynasties

-multiple research at a time like in sins of a solar emp.

-different ques for building and recruiting

-spell that cast outside of border

-better organisation of spells, such as, Element, level, Spell

-the edit troop option actually edits the selected troop and not use it as a template to clone it and create another with a different name.

-monster recruiting lairs open for all races (if not; maybe it can be modded )

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Welcome to the public beta