Speaking about Demigod
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/400748

I haven't tried these mods, perhaps they turn a mediocre game into something awesome, but until I know that for a fact, this is too much effort for a mediocre game for me (my GOG library alone taunts me to no end).

I guess it's good that those who paid full price for Demigod might get something out of it. I wrote off the game long ago even though I bought it during early beta (which btw, I realize is my fault, I still had quite a few credits from Stardock's old store and needed to spend them and Demigod looked really good; GPG had a lot of hype at the time so I was expecting great things).

Well, of course, obviously since I bought it in beta, I still had great faith in GPG, now I'm in your boat.

I don't own Elemental, I'll preface that immediately.

But why does this game get so much hate? And yet on this very site, there are games constantly pimped to other forum users that were completely broken by the developer and never fixed? Arcanum and the Gothic series come to mind, both of which I did buy off the recommendation of people on these forums. They were abandoned and never fixed. They had to have extensive fan patches to make the games run.

In Elemental's case, it was sent out broken and buggy. But now the developers are doing what Troika and JoWood never did and actually are *fixing* the game.

Shouldn't that be something actually applauded? They could have just abandoned it as a failure, but they are trying to do right by their purchasers.

When you say you're going to make a new modern Master of Magic you bloody well at least make it playable.
Yes I'm bitter that they got my hopes up.

A couple of reasons it's getting all the hate it is.

1) A lot of people wanted nothing more than Master of Magic with new graphics. Anything that was different at all in the least are going to piss those people off and they tend to be very vocal fans.

2) While it was playable (I didn't have any crashes) it did get pushed out in a form that required a zero day patch, a number of people weren't happy about that.

3) Stardock is actually kind of odd as a dev/publisher. They always continue to support their games, and you can be assured that the form of the game when it first comes out is going to be VERY different than what it looks like down the road. They were still releasing patches for GalCiv2 for years after it was released. Stardock and Blizzard are the only two companies that I know will continue supporting and patching a game long after it's been released. Most people don't understand that, or don't like the fact that it wasn't 100% to their liking the day it was released.

Impulse games get pimped really hard on preorders. Anyone buying Gothic probably had read some reviews or had picked it up for cheap. When you pre-order at full price and it comes out as a unplayable mess that pisses people off. Also, Stardock had just taken a black eye doing the very same thing recently with Demigod, yet long enough ago to have changed things, yet they didn't. That's a giant "screw you" to their customers.

That's why Elemental gets hate.
Point of contention, the Diablo 2 patch that I waited nearly a year for, that fixed a number of issues that made Battle.net a cesspool of duping, cheating, and griefing had a grand total of one developer on it. All the while Blizzard was suing the pants off anyone trying to allow people and alternative persistent world (by releasing clean room server code on their own, for free, so the community could run servers).

Yeah, Blizzard loves to patch and support their cash cows, but once they quit caring, they only pay lipservice anyway.

Stardock, on the other hand, does add content to their first party games, well after the fact, you are correct.

Haha, yes, we got that from your posts.
Did you actually get the game after the first-expansion-for-free date? If not, perhaps the stand alone `expansion' will manage to satisfy. Don't get your hopes up only to have them crushed again, but I'd keep an eye on it. They do promise a complete overhaul..

No I haven't bought it yet and I'm trying to keep up to date with its changes. Always on the lookout for 4x fantasy games. :)

I'm not going to get it until it's way cheaper anyway. Sometimes I can be a stubborn arsehole and the way Stardock have behaved irritates me so much I won't buy a game from them again if it's not dirt cheap. Knowing Stardock that will take what, 10 years?

Ok if they make a truly fantastic game I might reconsider but what are the chances for that?

Just could test the game on a friends computer and I am impressed by the game. It's like a modern Master of Magic clone and many things are very appealing to me: unit creation, character customization, graphics style, ...

Finally Elemental is worth buying?

I'm still waiting for the eventual retail re-release with all the patches and DLC included DRM free, like they did for Sins of a Solar Empire. Maybe it is fixed enough now and maybe it isn't, but I don't have an overwhelming need to play this ASAP and would rather not connect to Impulse for patches and such.

Wait a second... you don't even own it, so I'm guessing you haven't played it, yet you're throwing a fit about it not being playable? You do realize that most people didn't have any issues with crashing and only complained about design choices (in that it wasn't exactly like Masters of Magic)? Your opinion just lost a LOT of credibility. :(

I've never said I own it. Read a lot about it though. I've mainly been criticising Stardock and the decisions they've made.

Sins of a Solar Empire had DRM to begin with?
I think you're being to harsh on them, despite their shortcomings they ARE trying to fix it.