Jon Shafer joins Stardock to work on elemental

[Panda_Power]

Good luck to Jon! He is hugely talented and will make Elemental an amazing game in the future.

Civ 5's loss is EWOM's gain!

 

[tokala]

Jon talks about "streamlining"

 

[moksheebs]

Moderator Action: Pre-Emptive warning:

I don't want to see any character assassination etc in this thread, please.

what's character assassination?

 

[krasny]

Shafer ruins Civ 5, now he gets to work on Elemental?

Surely this is a unique case of a rat joining a sinking ship.

 

[d,,p]

http://forums.elementalgame.com/403503/page/1/#2860255

Greetings all! Proud to be joining the Stardock team, and expect to work on a lot of great projects here in the future.

There's been some assumptions here about what my joining Stardock will mean for the games the studio will be putting out from now on. Fear not all - they'll be clearly recognizable as Stardock games. One thing that I will say though, is that Stardock's games are awfully complex, and probably need to be streamlined some so as to not confuse new players. I can't talk about too many details on what our detailed plans are yet, but a little tease can’t hurt.

Right now I'm thinking we'll trim the interface down to one big button in the middle of the screen, 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels tall (approximately - will vary based on the resolution of the user’s monitor). The text on this button will say "Win the Game." I've had some discussions with Brad and the marketing team about this, and everyone is really excited by the possibilities. We've seen it work well in products from other publishers, and I really feel that this new direction will result in Stardock's games appealing to a much larger audience. We'll do some focus testing and see how things go. If people are still having some trouble grasping the gameplay concepts we may have to simplify things a bit more. I'll keep you guys posted!

Jon

 

[moksheebs]

I am NOT happy. Stardock is my "last bastion" after what happened with the latest civ iteration. Does this mean that we Stardockers will have to endure another "renewed vission" from this person, as we civvers had to?

Not happy. Not happy at all. Count me among the ones that see Shafer as the responsible for the weakest civ ever. I don't want to see that happen to GalCiv, or the new Elemental for that matter... now that they finally have something playable, fun and engaging after patch 1.1.

NOT happy.

get off the internets, troll.

Moderator Action: calling someone a troll is considered trolling on these forums

 

[moksheebs]

Shafer ruins Civ 5, now he gets to work on Elemental?

Surely this is a unique case of a rat joining a sinking ship.

Moderator Action: Foul language is not acceptable on the forums

 

[moksheebs]

i am with you ricardojahns.

I do not play civ 5 because i don't like what shafer did with it.
I bought elemental, hoping to have something to chew, especially with kael.

To me, shafer joining stardock for elemental is bad news.
I would have preferred to see shafer joining stardock for another project where his vision is compatible with the game concept...

Moderator Action: Foul language is not acceptable on the forums

 

[lschnarch]

If you've seen my posts, you know how critical I've been. But statements like this are just so ignorant. Do you give up on Football player for life because they didn't hit the stats you wanted? Never expecting they can improve between seasons? Learning the game as they gain experience? Jon's post listed above shows just how tuned in he is to the criticism. I have more faith in him now than ever before, and I've had embarrassingly epic meltdowns about Civ V.

Very bad analogy.
Not only is Football a sports in which it is the team which makes the difference, it is a sport at all. In sports, you have to deal with your opponent and the moment.

In game designing, you have literally years of time and no opponent blocking your progress.
Apparently, Mr. Shafer didn't realize almost any of the problems due to his core decision of going with a (failed) attempt to mimic Panzer General.
Exactly these problems were discussed even before release here in this very forum. (And, btw, the advertised "fronts in the countryside" are still not there - fighting is still about cities)

Mr. Shafer may be a good coder, but given the current evidence, he's not a designer.
At least not for a Civilization type game. Just because he obviously doesn't understand this kind of games.
But these are the games I am interested in. So the conclusion still is obvious: I won't buy a game in which Mr. Shafer has played a significant role in designing. Just because I don't trust him anymore.

Ignorant (to make use of your words) is not to look at the evidence which assumedly rest on your harddisk.

1. Main Cause of Almost Any Problem W/in Civ5

Combat is mutually exclusive from most every other aspect of Civilization. You go on to redeem yourself later in your post.

The design of the combat system has obvious influence on how cities work.
Going for the falsely so-called "1upt" required low production, by that only a handful of buildings, by that limiting the choices for builder-type gamers.
It had obviously consequences regarding the way the cultural expansion works, which avoids production related hexes as long as ever possible.
It had obviously consequences regarding the way in which tile improvements work.
And so on, and so on.

2. by many

I'm not one of those players who regard 1upt as a gamebreaking feature. I've yet to see any proof to support the claim that many [majority] regard 1UPT [badly].

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=405888

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=389254



I've got evidence, I'm afraid you do not.

You're kidding, aren't you?
In the first poll, 64% of voters actually have voted for NOT-1upt.
In the second poll, which was started early after release (guess why?) and which was resurrected a fortnight ago, we see that there is quite a shift in the voting.
When the poll was bumped, it had around 800 voters with 80% voting for 1upt. Now we have around 1000 voters and 76% are in favour of 1upt.
Which means that the 200 additional voters after Dec. 21st were in favour "only" by 60:40.
But, if you read what people have written, you will see that quite some of the "yes" voters actually are advocating something which clearly is not "1upt". There are all kinds of suggestions for stacking: stacking of workers, stacking of ranged and melee type units, limited stackind and whatnotever.

So, having had a short look at your "evidence", it doesn't look so strong anymore.

 

[Dale]

Good luck in your new endeavorer Jon.

Whilst you're over there, teach Brad some manners.

 

[Androrc the Orc]

I wish Jon the greatest of luck in his new employment at Starbucks

 

[jprc]

(...)
Whilst you're over there, teach Brad some manners.

I thought the "misunderstanding" between you and Brad during the beta of Elemental was exagerated by rumors, but it seems the wound is still open...
It is a matter of fact that Brad is not exactly easy-going when he comes to defending his ideas, and I still have some bruises of rugby matches i played about 30 years ago against Aussies... they are not easy going either!
Pity to read that you are worn out by Civ 5 modding though.
I hope Jon will be able to dodge heavy shells if his ideas are not shared by the boss!

 

[Androrc the Orc]

I thought the "misunderstanding" between you and Brad during the beta of Elemental was exagerated by rumors, but it seems the wound is still open...
It is a matter of fact that Brad is not exactly easy-going when he comes to defending his ideas, and I still have some bruises of rugby matches i played about 30 years ago against Aussies... they are not easy going either!
I hope Jon will be able to dodge heavy shells if his ideas are not shared by the boss!

Opa! Você é de Moçambique?

 

[moscaverde]

I don't think Jon is to blame for Civ5, but I hope he doesn't do the "have you ever played Panzer General" on us again.

 

[RikC]

Another is that he wanted to work wth a company that that the freedom to make the kinds of games he wanted to make.

Isn't keeping your employer happy and convincing them of your ideas to the point where you can realize them also part of what a talented professional should be able to do?

 

[LegioCorvus]

In all honesty, this has reduced my desire to play Elemental.

The hiring of Kael greatly increased my desire to check it out in the future, but this has equally reduced that. So I guess we're at where we were before. I'll check it out if I start to hear good things. (And whatever happened to the standalone Fall From Heaven being put out by Firaxis? Axed after the Civ5 fiasco?)

Is Jon to blame for everything? Probably not.

Is Jon completely blameless? Also no.

The man pushed 1UPT. Admittedly, one of the features I was initially excited about for Civ5. It didn't work, and we all learned from that. At least, it didn't work in this form. I think this is one of those situations where we could only truly know how it worked after trying it. So, in a way, it's good we got it out of our system.

Then there's global happiness, bugs, etc.

To people that claim that Firaxis is a team, and Shafer was just some cog in a machine, read the man's own words:

RPS: Even for the more recent Civilizations? There’s one guy doing the core of the programming?

JS: Yeah. The thing is, that’s always how Sid Meier’s done it. Firaxis is his company, and that’s just the model that we use. The games have been successful, and it’s the only way that we know.

RPS: So one of the bigger reasons why you were made lead designer is because you know both sides. Programming and design.

JS: Yes. Which is becoming more common, but to be proficient enough in programming to handle all the gameplay rules, you have to be fairly experienced. We had other designers at Firaxis who were senior to me, but they weren’t programmers or they hadn’t played Civ. It’s such a specialised role. Our teams are getting bigger now, so on Civilization V I didn’t program all the AI. Only about half. We had a combat programmer doing combat AI, and a programmer doing the AI for the workers and explorers, but I programmed all the game rules and the diplomatic and economic AI.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/10/code-to-joy-jon-shafer-on-civilization-v/

There may have been extenuating circumstances that lead to Civ5 being released the way it was. Maybe Jon put on a dog 'n' pony show to get his new job and exaggerated those circumstances. But even if Jon had all the time and budget in the world to release Civ5, do we honestly believe that things such as Global Happiness or the AI's diplomacy and military prowess would be that much better? There would be less bugs, likely, but the core gameplay came out the way it was even after early user feedback wasn't entirely positive.

So, to Jon, good luck. I hope you learned from this experience and continue to strive to get better. Just don't give us another Final Frontier, Civ4 Espionage, or Civ5.

 

[Zeppelin4]

Good luck to Jon! He is hugely talented and will make Elemental an amazing game in the future.

Civ 5's loss is EWOM's gain!

I love CIV 5 and really hated to see him go. On the other hand it will make me follow Elemental more closely now after I gave up on the game with the bad launch reviews.

 

[Greybriar]

I don't envy Jon going to work on Elemental. If only he could make it the spiritual successor to Master of Magic that it was originally intended to be, I would be pleased as punch.

And for those who think Jon was a nobody before Civ5, here's an FYI. According to MobyGames, Jon Shafer is credited with:

• Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization (2008), 2K Games
• Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (2007), 2K Games
• Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Warlords (2006), 2K Games
• Sid Meier's Civilization IV (2005), 2K Games
• Sid Meier's Civilization III: Conquests (2003), Atari, Inc.

Good luck, Jon.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

If you listen to the EUIII forums, Paradox is messing up Paradox these days ^_^. Typical overblown remarks though.

Haha, good thing no other forums I know do that.

 

[Venereus]

Wtf????