then you are not reading the thread annatar (or only the op)

my main concern is that elemental will come out with a few bugs, good polish but mediocre gameplay. sins for example got me hooked pretty fast but after playing some games it became stale pretty quickly (luckily there were mods). gavlcivII while i do like it and even play every once in a while it could have so much more. (carriers, portals, warp lanes, world ships, ...)

that is what i meant by shallow, i do not mean bugs, missing features, lack polish but a general feeling that comes after playing a few games: been there, done that, next.

a really good game will get you hooked because each game you play is significantly different from the game before and there are always some surprises. i really hope stardock proves me wrong this time and makes a brilliant game.

This is exactly what I mean as well. We are not testing much of gameplay! It is quite possible that they have the gameplay testing for already half a year, something that we do not see, but somehow I doubt this.

In all good betas, that become good games, gameplay testing with beta testers starts about HALF A YEAR before release, this is how much it roughly require to polish gameplay, balance all things, optimize AI, etc. Take the most recent Starcraft II beta. Quite playable and fun beta was available half year ago, and all this time they spend fine tuning and sometimes dramatically modifying game mechanics, so that the game become fun, balanced, etc. And that is Blizzard, that has much more resources to internally test the game and introduce new features than Stardock.

But we have about one month left! And we still do not see "feature complete" beta! Call me pessimist, but I think that for this game to become good, I would guess they need additional several month, and may be half a year to make the game rich and balanced. That's based on other betas that I have seen, including past betas of Stardock itself (GalCiv). If game is released in August, it is just difficult to believe that they get it right from the first go and without much gameplay testing with us.

I may be wrong, hell I HOPE that I am wrong, but Stardock, PLEASE, take you time, do not rush the game! Let us play with good, feature complete beta, and after that implement corrections and enrich the game before the release.

This is true but first impressions are huge.  They are welcome to do whatever they wish but there is a large section of gamers who will try the game out, not like it and never come back to it.  A few do this, tell there friends the game isn't good and more sales are lost.  It won't matter what changes are made at that point, those users are lost.  As this is a bit of a niche game the buyers will probably be more forgiving but it would still be better to add the extra content and polish in the initial release than wait for later.

I have faith the game will be pretty good when it's released.  I just don't see it becoming a great game by August 24.  I know we are not seeing the whole picture but I have a feeling that things like quests, spells and building types aren't much more advanced than what we are currently seeing.  There should be ~200 spells and tons of quests.  Balancing 200 spells and writing hundreds of fun, interesting quests will be very time consuming for instance.  And there is much, much more than that.  Hopefully I am wrong but that's what I feel.  Would much rather them go the Blizzard way and wait a little too long to release then release too early.

If you're not a Game Designer then how do you know one month is not enough?  I'm not trying to insult you here, it's just that these kinds of "I don't make games, and I don't know how to make games, and I don't know how to make this game better, but this Game isn't good enough." posts are pointless.

If you have a suggestion for the game, by all means post it.  Offer up some constructive critism, present valid arguments and reasoning.  Infering that the Developers at Stardock are in over their head and are producing a game that will ultimately be terrible only adds weight to my opinion that you don't really know how game Development processes.  Do you honestly think Beta 3A with some refined UI elements and Tactical battles is going to be the game that ships out?  Really??

I am not a game designer, but I am a game player, including many betas, including Stardock betas. (It is like litirature critic, you do not have to be able writing books ) Usually, one month before gold the game is more or less done, and the things which are left are fluff, balance and fine tuning. This beta may be very different, but if it is not, I am just asking the developers to not rush the release and spend necessary time for this game.