This latest pseudo-poll kerfuffle has me wondering if there is a 'silent majority' of folks who are just playing the beta, reading around here, and might have been posting debugs and crash dumps to fogbuz before the spambastards ruined that for us. There are certainly more people in the beta than have replied in any of these related threads, so I don't think it makes much sense for any of us to be claiming to have identified a 'majority opinion,' at least not for the beta folks and interested lurkers as a whole.

Oh, and go pigeon^2 go. You save me a lot of typing on a regular basis.

Ahh yes, I understand what you mean. Honestly (and I know I'm about to get flamed for pointing this out), it was Frogboy's fault for stating  the OP the way he did and for people boiling it down to "black and white/one way or the other". 

Note: Not yelling at you here Gorgon, just posting this big so everyone see's it..

THEY WILL NOT DROP THE LORE!!!! THE FACTIONS WILL STILL HAVE LORE WITH OR WITHOUT CUSTOMIZATION!!!!!

Sorry, like I said not yelling at you, I just really want to drive that into people's heads.

The other thing we have going on in this thread is there are a lot of new testers posting. Now, I want to be careful how I say this because I'm Not trying to berate anyone or make anyone look bad, just pointing out some facts. Some of these people posting are saying "Hey it would be cool if you can change how our Sovereign looks" or "Hey, it would be cool if we could change how buildings look". By saying this they show they haven't done any real digging into the game yet at all as they don't know they can Already do these things. In the same respect though they are seeing this post and the first thing they think is "Oh No, they are going to ship a game with No Lore!!!" so they say "Add Lore" without realizing they are shooting themselves and everyone else who wants customization in the foot. the Dev's read the reply, and not realizing these people don't know anything about the game yet, count up another tally for "More Lore/Less Customization".

Again, I can't stress enough how I don't mean that to sound bad or wrong, I'm not saying these people are dumb or anything, just that they haven't seen the full picture yet and are making a decision based on something that scares them I.E. Not Having Any Lore.

The Lore will Still Be There No Matter What. That won't change.

It's not like the Devs would see a bunch of posts asking for more customization and say "Oh Shit!!! Call Random House and cancel the book deals!!!! People don't want Lore!!!!" ...LoL

You don't sound like an ass except for mentioning it, but neither do you sound like a practical business owner, and I suspect that business goals are almost as important to this Stardock project as is the dev team's love of the fantasy TBS genre and their ambition to break new ground by mixing in 'just the right' computer RPG elements.

OK, maybe I wouldn't have thought "asshat" without your wording, but after a couple of reads your take on current and potential Elemental buyers who aren't into tons of public typing does seem a bit rude. You are blithely dismissing hopefully large numbers of your fellow PC game players simply because they don't also share your enthusiasm for this, quite small, online 'community.' Reasons for that sort of choice surely vary widely. Time pressure, paranoia about online anything, severe dyslexia, or simple shyness, are a few that come to mind easily.

Customization. - 'Nuff said!!

I am a little divided on this question. In GalCiv2 I don't think I've played a single one of the pre-created races past turn 10. I always tended to make up my own space aliens. This would make it look it like expanded customization would be a sure winner for me.

On the other hand, I've also been an avid player of Warcraft 3. That game had no customization at all (except for missions made with the scenario editor). Every race was very different and played in very different ways.

With that in mind, I am going to actually cast my vote for distinct factions. Once Elemental becomes a top-rated bestseller ( ), an expansion could be made to expand on customization. Some people have already suggested this (forgive me if this option has already been counted out; I haven't read the entire thread). I think if GalCiv2 had originally come with the same race distinctions as it did with Twilight of the Arnor, I might have played them more... as it is, it's so wired into my brain now that GalCiv = custom races that I do it without thinking .

I am more into the idea of deeply developed 10 factions, with distinctive art and great stories, rather than too much customization.  I feel that there has to be some thread to hold the entire project together, and having a well developed universe would do this.

I'm for more races and the ability to create our own races. More customization across the board should be one of the most important elements to keep in mind. A game without or very little customization grows stale quickly

Yes, Stardock is catering to the strategy gamer crowd, not the console FPS crowd. So what? If you think anything more than a small fraction of strategy gamers actually post or even read online game forums you'd be sorely mistaken. I have friends and family who still play Civ IV, HoMM III/IV/V, GC II, etc who I doubt have ever even been to a game's website until it's been released. None of these people would even be aware to expect a game called Elemental that they will probably enjoy if I hadn't told them, and while they'll probably buy it once it comes out, they aren't going to go online months before the game will be released to talk about it. Some because they don't care - they enjoy playing strategy games not developing them; some because they don't have time; others because reading and participating in online forums is just not their cup of tea.

Obviously, the people I know are not a statistical sample either, but I would be absolutely shocked if the percentage of strategy gamers who participate in online discussions about games while still deep in development process is much higher at all than in the rest of gaming. Sure, those of us who are active around here are probably going to continue playing Elemental long after the average buyer will; but if all goes well then there will be many more 'average' buyers, and if even a small percentage of them continue playing Elemental for years to come that is a huge infusion of long-term players.

Genre-dependent. Dragon Age is an RPG. The game is the story, the two are inseparable. Even in an RPG like Dragon Age that gives you a lot of choices, so that the story can actually play out somewhat differently each time, you can only play it so many times before you lose interest. For me, that number was two and a half times (until the expansion). The reason was because I was just seeing the same story elements over and over. In particular, the first time I played through it wasn't the game's features or combat system that made me stay up all night way too many times, it was the story. It was like reading a book! I wanted to know what happens next. If the Dragon Age expansion just gave me some new abilities and new items to equip, I never would have bought it because that's not the main reason why I enjoyed Dragon Age to begin with.

Elemental is a strategy game, despite a few RPG-like components. Even if the campaign is well-done, I will play through it once and not come back to it. The longevity of strategy games comes from sandbox mode. It allows us to create our own story, play the same game but in totally different ways for a very long time. If Stardock were to release an expansion that only extended the campaign or story I would not be excited. I look for completely different things from strategy games and RPGs (and in their expansions in particular).

An expansion to an RPG should be a sequel to the story, because the story is the heart of the game. An expansion to a strategy game should add content and features that will allow us to play the game in sandbox mode in that many more new ways. The richness of the story and lore behind the core game factions and all will draw me into the game to begin with, it'll make the world feel that much more alive even in Sandbox mode. When I'm stuck between a conflict between two factions that hate each other it'll feel that much more visceral if I'm aware of some backstory behind it and all. But what will keep me playing Elemental (or any strategy game) for years to come are customization options and the ability to play the game in so many different ways.

You only have one chance to draw a player into the game. Once you've accomplished that, you have time to work in the customization and other features that will keep the player around for even longer. 

Well yeah. But it all comes down to my last paragraph:

"You only have one chance to draw a player into the game. Once you've accomplished that, you have time to work in the customization and other features that will keep the player around for even longer."

Just like pretty much every other strategy video game that's ever been made and sold, it's probably a safe bet that most of the people who buy Elemental will just be your regular, average gamer who happens to enjoy strategy games.

Yes, a small number of people will be more drawn to the campaign. A small number will never even play the campaign. A smaller number of people will only buy Elemental for modding, and so on. Sure this is speculation on my part but based on everything I've ever heard, read and experienced I'd put money on these assumptions. I think the first impression is what matters the most, to most people: if someone's first impression of a game is that it's kind of dull and boring, they will just set it aside and not look back. And most people's first impressions will be dictated by the stock content of the game. 

So the more love and toil that goes into perfecting the stock content and core of the game, the better people's first impressions of it will be, and the more people will be drawn in, and the fewer people will discard it. Some (relatively) basic customization options (faction editor, sovereign editor, map editor, random map generator, full-fledged modding capabilities....) should be able to carry the crowd to the first expansion, whose focus should be on maintaining the longevity of the game by providing more game features and customization.

Sure, people who want all the customization at the world right at their fingertips right from the start (nothing wrong with that) might be a little bit disappointed, but if that is remedied in an expansion this is probably the type of person who will buy the game later, once that's all added in, or come back to the game if they bought it and got bored.

Whereas the average person who picks up the game and thinks "wow, this is kind of dull... There are all these customization options but I'm just not feeling this game, it feels kind of empty" will in all likelihood put the game away and never give it another chance. 

That is why I think the retail game should be somewhat more focused towards the crowd who will give the game one and only one chance (obviously still only talking within the demographic of gamers who enjoy TBS/fantasy games - I am not advocating turning Elemental into a game to attract people who only ever play FPS games or something). Give the modders and customization-happy people something to sink their teeth in, too, but they are more likely to wait for future expansions to get the rest of what they're looking for than your average player.

Yes, and you do that by making a fun game. Strategy gamers don't care about story, they want to make their own. Compare the success of the civ series (the only "story" being a vague tie-in to history) to... um... I can't really think of "lore" heavy grand strategy games. I guess the scope of a GRAND strategy game is beyond a "story". Look at MoM, the game this is the spiritual successor to. There was NO story, and you could customize fairly extensively (it wasn't spore, but for its time it was pretty open).

As for modding, a modding scene keeps the game alive, and draws in the more creative types. Civ 4 forums are still hives of activity to this day, despite the game being fairly old. That creates a major and devoted base that will rabidly buy up expansions and sequels. Civ 5 will sell like mad due to this base, in spite of reviews or anything else, so appealing to stardock's finances for a "lore heavy" game is a failed argument.

I agree that customization is more important than story for this game. I am looking for a game to replace Age of Wonders Shadow Magic.  Played that game for years and customized many maps, units, Etc. But was not able to create new races which I would have love to do like I can with Galactic Civ 2.  I am hoping that this game will make customization easy and fun without having to go to a bunch of sites to look up how to mod the game.

Personally I could care less about the lore, since I rarly find a Campaign in a Stratagy game fun I perfer to play my own game. So I vote as I've said before for as much customozation as possable as long as the AI will be able to use it. One thing I found lacking in Age of Wonders (all versions) was how the AI did not know how to use navel units.

I think the same. Customization is less important in the first release, more of it can be added in expansions.