Gee thanks Didden and others.  You managed to chase Frogboy away.  His openness and willingness to share his thoughts with us was one of the reasons I followed this forum on a daily basis.

Thread's supposed to be about rating the game in its current mid-beta state, and pretty much just that.  At least if the game fails, Stardock can make its money back selling all the wood from the soapboxes constructed here telling a company with more than a decade's worth of experience in making niche hits how to do their business from start to finish.

But Brad, it probably wasn't a good idea to start this thread with only a mid-beta--or to start a thread like this, at all.  Too many people with their own ideas of how to completely remake the game.  Also too many who don't understand the cycle of game development, and what a mid-beta is like.  My advice, for what little it's worth: don't ask players questions like these, or maybe grow a thick skin and quietly read for content.  Best of luck.

I not sure why Frogboy is answering and why people are taking him so seriously, he's not the lead developer anyway right? He's just the AI guy. 

Derek might announce tomorrow in a Dev Journal that frogboy is a idiot and totally wrong and we are going to remove cities, or techtrees or add super complicated city management systems or whatever drastic change people are asking and it would happen despite what frogboy said.

Or did I misunderstand how E:FE works? 

Seriously Derek posts a lot less but for some reason, he doesn't draw as much fire even when he disagrees with the poster and miracles of miracles I have even seen people writing a wall of text (a sure sign someone pretty much has an idea stuck in his head) and then admit Derek managed to change his mind. I wonder why that is...

But then again Frogboy has more cool toys? 

His company.  His original choices of material, his final decisions, despite whatever input is received. 

Perhaps because here he asked for a verdict--poor, fair, good, excellent--on the mid-beta, rather than novels by Tolstoy? 

In retrospect, he probably should have discussed what a mid-beta is like, what exactly to expect from it, and what exactly he wanted that rating on: the feature list, and the expressed intent (greater distinction in champions, etc).  But really, it wasn't too difficult to figure that when you ask for a poor-fair-good-excellent rating, you aren't asking at the same time for a lecture in how a game should be rebuilt from start to finish.

Strawman arguments are a poor color choice for you.  Whatever Brad's reasoning behind asking his question, the responses have ranged from on-the-mark to discussions of how terrible FE is, to how it can all be rebuilt and become a success if everything is scrubbed.  Oh, and comments about how he isn't important in the company, so his remarks should be ignored.

Poorly framed question, responses all over the place, an exasperated developer, tons of people who don't own the tiniest piece of the game or any responsibility for it pontificating about what it is and should be.  Success all around, I'd say.

Look who's talking.

They have run the exact same poll at the start of every FE beta. 

The difference between the way Derek treats and Brad gets treated is obvious. If Brad disagrees with someone, he gets WOM shit thrown in his face. Derek doesn't have any WOM baggage.

We'll just have to suffice for the once a month postings from Derek. Good job.

Not sure why you seemed to point this at me, since I happen to agree with you--though there's far more to it than that.

I finished the game.  I still agree with my original vote of good.  I had a lot of fun.

a couple things I would still like to see changed

The first is the number of champions.  I ended up with 13 champions on a medium map with 3 enemies.  The new development journal is taking about increasing their power, if that is the case they really need to limit the number.  13 for a medium map seems to be a lot.

The second, we touched on just a little bit.  Pioneers and outposts.  I really think there needs to be a construction time on outposts, and an additional cost.  When a pioneer settles or creates and outpost there should be a cost of materials and gold.  But there should also be a cost of time.  I would also like to see roads develop between outposts and their "parent" city, or perhaps a path (not as good as a road).  I would also like to send troops to the outposts as guards.  They should be able to defend anything inside the ZOC of the outpost.  You could always limit the number of troops that can fit in an outpost.

Roaming monsters, bandits, and regenerating monsters.  Once the world is "cleared", it is actually kind of boring.  I wouldn't mind seeing a forest drake come out of a forest, a slag wander out of a nearby swamp, or a bandit party try to raid one of my smaller cities.  Or even if I left a bigger city unguarded (except for the militia) have a bigger group take a shot pillaging a city.  Don't destroy the city, just take some gold and maybe have a 3% chance of a couple buildings being destroyed.

Sigh that was a joke. Besides that's the way Brad himself described his role.... Honestly, Brad has bigger balls than you and me combined and he doesn't need fanboys to cry for him.

Definite "dont own the tiniest piece of the game". Or can only SD people and I suppose fanboys of SD post their opinions?

Oh I agree. 

But here's the problem for those people: Brad doesn't have to put up with shit. As they say, he holds all the cards. He is under no obligation to sit here and take crap from anonymous people.  We either want Brad to participate or we don't. If we do, then should should afford him a modicum of the respect that he has earned. If you want marketing pap, then wait for one of their moderators to pipe in. If you want the CEO of the company to participate, then don't throw shit on him. 

I was one of the loudest critics of WOM. I was also deeply immeshed in the beta so I knew that Brad's involvement in WOM was probably less than his involvement in FE. But he took the fall like CEOs do when one of their products doesn't live up to the hype. If FE fails,  I have no doubt that it'll be Brad who takes the blame.

The reason people like Brad is because he is outspoken but also takes responsibility. I remember Demigod. It was Brad who took personal blame for any and all issues people had with it. Compare that to SOTS II. Does anyone even known the CEO of Paradox's name?  But taking responsibility doesn't give people a license to nitpick every opinion the man has.

How do you define back seat? He's not the designer. He's not the producer. He writes the AI and hangs out on the forum.  

edit: He's also the lead developer on FE.  So he's probably more involved on FE than he was in WOM. Perhaps since he is going to take the blame for anything that fails no matter what he has a vested interest in keeping an eye on things. But I don't think anybody is going to argue that he has to spend time on the forums.

Actually it's Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox. 

Quite right, though Wester's the money man, and Johann's the producer, developer, and pit bull.