Earlier on I did, a lot. The technology tree (Which of course, has tendrils in to every other part of a 4X game) was nothing like Endless Space. The battle system to start was a massive regression. The removal of the tax system and individual techs forced a simplification of old races. Since then though, they've tried to improve the tech system (And judging from the screens, it won't be too difficult to mod it right back in to the old system). The battle system is supposedly being improved to be superior to the original game. The races are still actively being worked on, solving some of their issues.

I'll have to reserve final judgement until the game is well and truly done. But in the interim, they seem to be progressing in the right direction.

I'm overall happy with the direction they are taking ES2

No, Not in the slightest , it keeps lots of the elements of the original and adds to it. It's already a great game and it isn't even finished yet. Bit miffed about the Hissho being a minor faction though.

Frogsquadron wrote:

We're still working on visual feedback so that the zoomed-out level of the tech tree is more easily readable for players. 

Is there any chance we can get continual zoom in and out for the tech tree/wheel, instead of just these two separate levels? That would be an immense help in keeping track of where everything is. 

If not that, then at least one more intermediate level. The zoomed-in level feels a bit cramped.

Frogsquadron wrote:

Strawberry wrote:

The only thing I really feel needs a lot of work is the research part. I'm one of the few that probably prefers the EL kind of researching (pick X number from any area before advancing to the next era) and am kind of sad to see it being replaced last patch with the science wheel which I find a disaster in ES 1 as well. It's really hard to read for me so I really hope that'll be improved on a clarity level so that in the end we get the science wheel from ES 1 with the cool stuff and clarity from EL. 

We're still working on visual feedback so that the zoomed-out level of the tech tree is more easily readable for players. 

Definitely looking forward to it. I'm totally aware I'm a minority when it comes to disliking the change from the EL way to revamping the ES 1 way so I apologize for bringing this up every time. In the end I hope we'll have a system that pleases both the hardcore ES 1 fans as new ones on terms of min-maxing and clarity. I love how you guys put more focus on meaningful decisions as this is definitely important and the way to go. Can't wait to see the end results and science gain lowered to normal amounts ;)

Strawberry wrote:

The only thing I really feel needs a lot of work is the research part. I'm one of the few that probably prefers the EL kind of researching (pick X number from any area before advancing to the next era) and am kind of sad to see it being replaced last patch with the science wheel which I find a disaster in ES 1 as well. It's really hard to read for me so I really hope that'll be improved on a clarity level so that in the end we get the science wheel from ES 1 with the cool stuff and clarity from EL. 

We're still working on visual feedback so that the zoomed-out level of the tech tree is more easily readable for players. 

dragons111888 wrote:

TheOnyxRaven wrote:

What work do you feel like there is on the colonization and planet grid aspect? 

Just having things be more in line with what Lo_fabre and xorunison have suggested. I think a system like that would be far superior to what is going on now. The changes they made in update 2 seem very strange to me, as the humidity vs. heat system seemed to fit really well for this game.

Honestly, I can't see myself putting 80 hours into ES2 as it is right now. I think I'm just going to spend more time with the Shifters and Tempest expansions for EL instead :P. Amplitude has been great for learning from game to game. And improving on each singular game from launch. ES1 from Launch to the End was great, and same with EL from launch to Tempest.  As for what the game can be, I agree. ES2 has the potential to be so much and I'm still excited for it's release, and what the game will look like by the end of it's life.

I'm just curious since I see that you've been around since the Early Access of ES1, which of the 3 games do you think had the best EA?

For sure ES2. While I wasn't toooo involved with the other two, the amount of responsiveness and community engagement from the devs has been great. I especially like the ideas forums. I spend a lot of time there. 

Fair enough, that engagement is what is keeping my faith in this game as strong as it is :P. And I just saw that forum last night and I think I'll be spending more time there as well!

Strawberry wrote:

The only thing I really feel needs a lot of work is the research part. I'm one of the few that probably prefers the EL kind of researching (pick X number from any area before advancing to the next era) and am kind of sad to see it being replaced last patch with the science wheel which I find a disaster in ES 1 as well. It's really hard to read for me so I really hope that'll be improved on a clarity level so that in the end we get the science wheel from ES 1 with the cool stuff and clarity from EL. 

This and so much of this. 

Not at all. I am really digging ES 2. A LOT even.

TheOnyxRaven wrote:

What work do you feel like there is on the colonization and planet grid aspect? 

Just having things be more in line with what Lo_fabre and xorunison have suggested. I think a system like that would be far superior to what is going on now. The changes they made in update 2 seem very strange to me, as the humidity vs. heat system seemed to fit really well for this game.

Honestly, I can't see myself putting 80 hours into ES2 as it is right now. I think I'm just going to spend more time with the Shifters and Tempest expansions for EL instead :P. Amplitude has been great for learning from game to game. And improving on each singular game from launch. ES1 from Launch to the End was great, and same with EL from launch to Tempest.  As for what the game can be, I agree. ES2 has the potential to be so much and I'm still excited for it's release, and what the game will look like by the end of it's life.

I'm just curious since I see that you've been around since the Early Access of ES1, which of the 3 games do you think had the best EA?

For sure ES2. While I wasn't toooo involved with the other two, the amount of responsiveness and community engagement from the devs has been great. I especially like the ideas forums. I spend a lot of time there. 

I just want to preface this post by saying that I still like Endless Space 2 and I am super excited to see it when it launches. Moreover, my thoughts presented in here are after roughly 12 hours of play across the few months it has been out.

Tl;dr – My approach to learning the Endless games isn’t working in Endless Space 2 and I feel like the vision for this game was different than ES1 or EL. I feel like I am overwhelmed by how much there is for me to learn this time around and need a lot of external resources to teach me the game. I think this is in part due to the fact that politics and economy feels too intrusive in the empires that aren’t focussed around them. I’m open to discussion as I might just be the minority opinion here, and would love if anyone could point me to some guides if you think I’m struggling to get something. :)

I hopped onto the Endless Space bandwagon a little bit later than some others on this forum, but earlier than most others, I think at least. I remember seeing Sins of Solar Empire: Rebellion on steam in August of 2012 and I really wanted to get it. The more and more I looked at it, the more Sci-fi games Steam recommended to me. But being a high school student at the time, I only had so much cash. That’s when Endless Space appeared as a recommended game. At first, I was hesitant, because I had no idea who Amplitude was, but after watching the trailer and looking at the screenshots I bought the game confident that Amplitude was going to give me a hell of a game. So sometime in September of 2012 Amplitude won me over as a fan :D. I remembered reading so many guides on the forums of how to get better, and feeling so rewarded when I beat AI on the Endless Difficulty for the first time. To keep this concise, I played Endless Space for about 70 hours in total from Sept 2012 to Jan 2017.

Now by the time Endless Legend (and Dungeons of the Endless) was announced and coming out, I was super excited, and excited enough to get my friends interested in Endless Legend. This time around I was there for the Early Access of the game and saw its development most of the way through. The whole time as Endless Legend grew; I felt like I understood the game and transitioned well with my knowledge from ES1. To put it in perspective, without having played EL much I was able to teach 3 or 4 of my friends, while we played in multiplayer, just from my ES1 knowledge. Since the Early Access of EL, I’ve played 110 hours of it (and loved every second of it).

Now when ES2 was announced in 2015, I could not tell you how excited I was. I was seriously skimming forums, news websites, and screenshots alike for a couple weeks straight. But now after playing it for the past 4 or so months, I just feel kind of… confused, alienated and frustrated. Now I was frustrated primarily at what appears to be bugs and what the lovely people at Amplitude are working their butts off every day to fix. So I’m not here to complain about what I know will be fixed by the time the game launches. (The most recent I experienced appears to be the permanent anarchy bug, which drew me to the forums today).   But after 12 hours of playing, which I still don’t think is enough to judge the entirety of the game so far, I do have to admit I feel confused and alienated.

The Military of ES2 – Is in my mind, is WAY better than ES1. It has hit that sweet spot of having the right amount customization with ship design balanced against the formations and tactics in battle. I’m excited to see fighters and bombers hopefully added in later. I was someone who didn’t mind the card system in ES1, but I love the long/medium/short range tactics decision more. I feel like it’s clear as to what it does, and how your tactics can enable the technology of your fleet. I love how ground battles work too, and can’t wait to see if there are more options with bombers or strategic ordnance later.  

The Economy of ES2 – I just don’t like the company HQ’s, is what I think comes down to it. I was more of a fan of the simplicity of the EL way of having the build roads and having each region have a maximum threshold for trading. As well the technologies seemed to allow for more trade routes per city or efficiency of the trade routes, which again seemed simple. Even with the Roving Clans I thought this simplicity made it fun and challenging to win economically with them.  However, in ES2 I could see the company HQ’s being really fun for the Lumeris (I haven’t played them yet) but I just see it as frustrating for everyone else. I’m glad that maybe the economic mechanics of ES2 are more in depth, but I feel that they are too intrusive as a whole. If was given an option to have the trade routes and company HQ’s managed by a decent AI, I would take it.  I just simply don’t like having to waste time buying more ships or worrying about spending huge amounts of dust to maintain the efficiency of my trade routes.

The Politics of ES2 – Influence at first was a bit of an awkward introduction into ES2 as it first appeared in EL. But I think the influence system works well in ES2 from my most recent play through. I however, am just confused by the whole senate thing. To me, it’s very cool in idea but very awkward in practice. I liked the empire plans in Endless Legend, as it was simple as to where you could spend influence points to benefit your empire. With the senate, you have to worry about who’s in power to even get to the point where you can really spend your influence points on what you want. It’s frustrating to the military orientated empires. Like the Cravers and United Empire seem to have rigid militaristic societal structures in place (from the lore) and then next thing you know the pacifist or ecological party is gaining huge traction. Then anarchy hits without warning and the whole empire is a dictatorship of a small party. Now I get the anarchy bug is a thing and in my case the pacifists who had like 1 seat out of 355 in the senate, managed to overthrow my militaristic majority senate and install a pacifist dictatorship with complete power. If anything I find that bug rather amusing at how the pacifists managed to overthrow them LOL. But I felt like I had no warning that I was on the fringe of anarchy, as all my huge systems were 100% happy and all my newer expansions were moderately happy.

Science of ES2 – My Sophons play through was my favourite. I usually play military empires first to learn how to defend myself better when I learn the economic or science empires later. I last played the Sophons in maybe November-ish, so they could have changed by now. I think as a whole science was alright, I don’t have any complaints with the process itself. The tech tree I see has changed since then, and what I don’t like is when some technologies are mutually exclusive and exhaustive to one another. I think there needs to be an improvement on displaying when one technology once researched will not let you research another.  

The UI – for the complexities that ES2 is beginning to add into the game, I’m afraid the minimalistic UI which I’ve always loved is just not working. With the way that each button has so many tabs now, I just feel like there should be a better way for navigation. After researching enough technologies and ships, the selection for a new solar system is too much. I get you can expand it, but I’m not even into the late eras when I begin to feel overwhelmed by sifting through all of the options I have to build. Sometimes I feel like I’m wasting time trying to find ones, and wish that if there are this many I could make a “playlist” of technologies to just click on and it queues my standard build for a new solar system. I’m not a personal fan of the lack of a background for the UI. (If there is one please let me know!). I just find it hard to see sometimes, despite it looking so damn good. I also don't like the hero menu what so ever, when I level my hero up, I just want it to notify me and take me directly to my heroes stat tree. I simply don't care about their flag ship or anything else when they are a governor.

If you’re a long-time fan or even a new comer to the series, please let me know your thoughts!  Maybe I’m the odd one out, or I’m approaching this game wrong. I really WANT to love it, trust me!

Anyways Thanks for reading this and I hope you have a good day. :)

No.

Very less so since update 2. I spent most of my 189 hours on ES as Sophons, using my superior SCIENCE! to rule the galaxy and, for reasons now behind us, I was extremely frustrated with the old tech-tree design. The new one's no 8th wonder of strategy games, but it dispelled most of my urges to stab myself with a fork whenever I bring it up.

In other regards, I do feel like the game's getting a bit too complex for the UI, but I don't think its the UI's fault either. Mostly, any mechanic that requires a tab within a tab is way too jumbled for the traditional Ampli layout to work out. Coincidentally, most of these mechanics (Marketplace/Trade Companies, System upgrades, Population dynamics in Politics) are full of potential but fall short because they get ''choked'' out of useful or interest at one point or another. Like how there's something like 21 Luxury resources but you'll never get to use more than 6 per game (and never the ones you want).

Currently, the thing that pains me the most about ES2 is how it falls short of what it could have been. Still Early Access and all, so I'm not giving up hope that these systems will get fixed by launch. But deep down, I think it's gonna go down the path of Disharmony 2, in the sense that some expansion will come to breathe life into lackluster mechanics, but only after months have passed and I've already sunk a few hundred hours into ES2 like some sort of gambling addict. Overall, I'm very optimistic about the game future since update 2, but I wish Ampli would give the game at least one update more than currently planned before launch.

On a side note, I wonder what EL2 will look like... I'm sure the population/politics mechanics will be ported over, but what else might get dragged back? And will we finally get the Sisters of Mercy Major faction dammit?!

TheOnyxRaven wrote:

UndeadPuppy wrote:
As a fan who has played both ES1 and EL, the only real complaint I have about the game is the fact that most of the Major Factions in ES1 aren't playable this time around.
I really miss the Amoeba and Automatons.

Me too :(. 

Agreed

UndeadPuppy wrote:
As a fan who has played both ES1 and EL, the only real complaint I have about the game is the fact that most of the Major Factions in ES1 aren't playable this time around.
I really miss the Amoeba and Automatons.

Me too :(. 

ajkrivo wrote:

I don't get your complaints. As a big fan of ES1 and EL with 65+ hours logged in ES2, all those things you mentioned seem to be working well to me. Having to invest money and military into maintaining trade routes just makes sense and was also true in ES1. When your trade companies connect to foreign subsidiaries, that's still done automatically, by the way. 

Politics is one of my favorite additions to ES2. It's not working perfectly at current due to a bug with unhappiness, but that will obviously be fixed soon. The amounts that things affect different parties will undoubtedly be tweaked by the final product. The idea of the senate system is great, and while it's fine to give feedback on how it is now, it's not fair to think that that's how it's going to be upon release. It certainly doesn't "alienate" me from the game, at any rate.

I actually think the UI is beautiful as-is. The current tech tree is actually easier for me to read and understand than the one in ES1, so I don't understand what the problem is. If you misspoke and are talking about the production queue on planets, then uh, it's pretty much exactly the same as the one in ES1 and EL, and I'm not sure what else to say.

I read your complaints, but I don't get them at all. If there are things to complain about in the game, these are not the things. Sorry if I sounded rude or dismissive; I'm not trying to say your experience isn't valid or anything, but it certainly doesn't correspond with my experience. On the whole, I think this game is in a great spot.

To clarify on the trade spot. The HQ is new for sure. I just am confused with it apparently, and maybe I'm not getting it on the level you were. In EL it was pretty much building a road and you're good. (I'm a bit fuzzy how it worked in ES1 as it's been awhile) In ES2, it's build an HQ in one system and then like an outpost in another and then manage ships and it's efficiency? Am I misunderstanding it? Is there a good guide for it? I just kind of feel like it's too much work turn-to-turn to care about for some factions. I get that once it's going it's going. But how many ships is optimal per HQ? What's an ideal efficiency? Does it matter per race, per system, etc?

Politics is great. I'm not against influence being added to ES2, I rather enjoy it. Minus the whole force truce thing close to launch. The senate was something I got excited for back in 2015, and now I really am just going to wait to see how it is on launch. I think it'll be interesting to see how some of the current and future factions will be able to interact with it.

 The UI just isn't working for me when I play the game. I love the aesthetic don't get me wrong. Something about it seems off to me. If I could get an option or mod to make it look more like the EL UI I'd take it in a heartbeat. What I was trying to say about the production queue is like when you are going to select buildings/units the images are larger and the display area is smaller. Like in EL in the city management section you can display like 28 technologies at a time without having to scroll. In ES2 it only expands to a list of 16. Which is different. It's more difficult to navigate. 50+ technologies.  Plus the UI in EL uses up more space to display things which I just found it more of an ease of life is all. It's way more minimalist in ES2.

Nah you don't sound rude or dismissive. Don't worry. I just want to know if maybe I took a crazy pill or something. I really, want to love ES2, and I think I will at launch. 

dragons111888 wrote:

Well first of all, this game is in early access, so I can't reasonably pass judgement on it until the developers say its finished. Secondly, while there are parts of the game that need some work (colonization and the planet grid for me right now), I really, really enjoy this game. I have almost 80 hours played so far, and I can't imagine myself not putting many more into the game. I love that Amplitude is using what they learned from both ES1 and EL to make a game that takes the best of both and improves on it. So to answer your questions, no, I don't feel alienated, I just feel excited for what I think this game can be. 

What work do you feel like there is on the colonization and planet grid aspect?

Honestly, I can't see myself putting 80 hours into ES2 as it is right now. I think I'm just going to spend more time with the Shifters and Tempest expansions for EL instead :P. Amplitude has been great for learning from game to game. And improving on each singular game from launch. ES1 from Launch to the End was great, and same with EL from launch to Tempest.  As for what the game can be, I agree. ES2 has the potential to be so much and I'm still excited for it's release, and what the game will look like by the end of it's life.

I'm just curious since I see that you've been around since the Early Access of ES1, which of the 3 games do you think had the best EA?

The communication and planning with ES2 has been fantastic thus far.