Re: what about the future?
 

Very very insightful.

You can sometimes see the Stardock frustrations through their Elemental beta process and they obviously have very thick skins. Ultimately, for them, it has been very positive in terms of weeding out the bad concepts and introducing new ones but the frustrations with community expectations do rise to the surface occasionally.

But the Stardock Developer Updates are now coming out every couple of days with YouTube videos showing 'warts and all' testing. Extremely interesting to watch as they find something they don't like.

I must say I've got very high expectations for Elemental. :D

Re: what about the future?
 

You know, actually I completely agree with this. I've never seen a game community that wasn't at least *somewhat* hostile to the developers, and this one is no exception. We always think we know better than they do, and are quite willing to say so, loudly ;) I don't mind however JK and KO work on their new project. I'll be content waiting for it to be released, and with any luck, it will give me the years of entertainment playing dom3 has. If they are keeping things on the down low because they don't want us dampening their enthusiasm, well, I don't blame them at all. Instead I will just wish them luck, and hope the new project turns out well.

Re: what about the future?
 

Stardock's a big company witth full time developpers working on their projects. Illwinter doesn't have these resources, and couldn't interact with the community the way Stardock does.

Re: what about the future?
 

If a king ignored a way to solve hunger for his kingdom simply because a village bully presented the idea... then the king made an unwise decision due to personal feelings. This reveals a weakness in the kings character.

If the fun of development is surviving primarily on keeping secrets then the project is really on unstable ground. The project should be able to survive based on creative ideas and a vision. I figured the secrets were because the developers had some contract with Shrapnel games involving keeping the game secret or the developers were following a trend from the 1990s and unaware how to protect their intellectual property during game development.
Overall I guess the success of the game doesn't really matter since Illwinter has never been interested in money.

Re: what about the future?
 

Or perhaps the fun of development is not based on keeping secrets, but based on not having to defend every step and every idea from naysayers.
They've got a group interested mostly because of dominions. Many of whom want a dominions 4 more than any other project. This may be the wrong audience for a new vision.

Re: what about the future?
 

I do see the points on both sides but logical arguments about what should be is moot now.
Its not as if the devs have to guess. They know what this community is like.
And I have to agree with their choices.

Re: what about the future?
 

GP, why is it that in everything you post recently you say something about "both sides"? :)

I miss the days where JK and KO were around more often. I hope we haven't chased them away by making it too unwelcome for them here. But as I said before, I can't really blame them. Even when they do nice things for us recently (like the latest patch) all they ever hear from us is whining and complaining. So it is no wonder if they don't want to have us whining and complaining about their new project. "You're doing THAT instead of making dominions 4?!"

Or they could just be really busy in real life these days, or keeping it a surprise. Who knows? But whatever, they are great guys doing a great job. I don't really care how they do it.

Re: what about the future?
 

NTJedi - I wonder if we should try to create a Dominions 3 mod for Elemental...

Re: what about the future?
 

That would take some time, to get the skins for all the different races, beasts and mythical creatures. I'd love to see it though :up:

Re: what about the future?
 

Yes, weeding out the bad concepts before release is one positive thing that I'd see as well, and why feedback even in the form of criticism isn't bad. Other companies pay a lot of money to do market analysis, they have it as a byproduct.

When I first heard about it a year or so ago I was interested, when I first saw what they had this quickly changed. I did complain very loudly one time about a marketing stunt of theirs which resulted in a statement about those claims, where those were watered down as being misunderstood. Overall I'm interested in whatever they come up with as well, though.

That certainly wouldn't be fun, but it's not like they'd be tailoring the game exactly to the quite probably even changing demands of their audience. It would be advertisement in the form of "look what we did, hot or not?", getting into touch with the potential future customers, instead of just a finished product and one-sided propaganda. Zero feedback would be the worst.

I believe that it's not really about secrets, anyway, but about the fact that for a programmer, and especially for a single working one, documentation is always a very painful thing to do.

What do the devs think this community is like? I'd like to agree with their choices, too.

They never have been unwelcome, they enjoy unquestioned sympathy from the fans. Never mind the front-seat passenger talk - the very first thing I'd bug KO about when I see him here again would be when the map that's never going to be finished is going to be finished. :rolleyes: