There is a similar thread on Steam forums, if anyone's interested: http://steamcommunity.com/app/392110/discussions/0/135514507318350383/?ctp=1 

I wonder if we'll hear anything from the devs' on their feelings about releasing the game with known gameplay deficiencies. Could be that they don't consider them deficiencies, but then I'd prefer they were open about it. If the plan is to push on with the release and address these issues in paid DLSc (bad) or patches (better), then fair enough. Seems like the focus of the attention is on AI now. This doesn't bode well for changes to gameplay as this will require further calibration and time is short.

The last patch before the release of Endless Legend there was similar concern that the game wasn't ready, mainly due to the fact that combat was refactored and seemed broken because changes weren't made to minor faction units. A lot of people, myself included, thought that they completely ruined and the game was in a bad state. Turns out a little balance goes a long way in making a game feel polished. That being said, I'm a little concerned that things like fully implemented diplomacy and faction specific tech haven't been touched by anyone other than the devs and the VIPs, but then again, both groups seem intent on releasing a quality game.

A this stage i would consider game in Alfa anymore 1 month to release is truly beta stage.

I would say a lot of the game can be improoved if they find the right spot for balancing.

Some other will need patches and right down DLC.

Its no new in the gaming industry.

From functionality point the game is "ready"

From expectation point due to EL and ES1 quality i would say it lacks some strenght.

I agree with the author of the topic.

Amplitude is too much based on casual players & artistic production. But smart & competitive players wants balanced and complex games, with strategic decisions to make, as the author explained.

The problem existed in Endless Legend, I see it still exist in ES2.

It would not be complicated to hire 2 professesional beta tester for a couple of months. To playtest, give feedback, propose changes. Even without being professional, I could do it, as some others competitive players could do it.

I was myself in the VIP forum section of Endless Legend Tempest expansion, and I remember most of the players had no point of balance of the game. No experience in multi, or the idea to seek to abuse of game features (what any competitive player always seek to do).

It would not cost some money, to optimise their game, and MAKE MORE MONEY in the long term of Amplitude !

I also have some concerns over this games impending release. but some things to consider:

1)            Marketing strategies over recent years have led to unfinished games being released prematurely.  This has more often than not been met by critical fans, and for good reason.  The idea is to get the game into the market and then fix it or improve it.  So maybe 12 - 18 months later it will be a great game.  Or maybe they will lose a shit load of revenue as fans are sick of this marketing approach, EA Bioware case in point, and a load of other games we can all think of. 

2)            ES2 is a entry to mid level space strategy game.  That is its place in the market.  So no illusions here, that is what you will get.  Play Stellaris if you want a deeper challenging 4X game,  I can tell you it is hard and uncompromising, but it plays well.  It just looks shit and so old school, although you can mod it.  If they had Amplitudes art direction and faction diversity it would be the only 4X space game you would play.

3)            ES2 has nowhere near enough core game mechanics to really make this game attractive to serious 4X players, the influence system alone is going to get a lot of criticism after release, fans start to get deeper into the game and then realising it has some serious flaws.  Presentation will give it the wow factor but game play will be mediocre at best and ultimately unsatisfying.   

This game needs 2 months extra work on it.  Core system stuff added, 4X end game content.  Space stations, espionage EL style, diplomacy interactions like GAL CIV 3,  Unique map modes for single players, Custom maps and scenario editor at release.  Basic 4X stuff that fans have been asking for from a space 4X for years.  It is just not going to happen in this one, sorry but that is the way it is.  Still its only forty bucks so what can we expect, maybe eighty bucks and we could get the game we all want.

cjfoster1960 wrote:

I also have some concerns over this games impending release. but some things to consider:

1)            Marketing strategies over recent years have led to unfinished games being released prematurely.  This has more often than not been met by critical fans, and for good reason.  The idea is to get the game into the market and then fix it or improve it.  So maybe 12 - 18 months later it will be a great game.  Or maybe they will lose a shit load of revenue as fans are sick of this marketing approach, EA Bioware case in point, and a load of other games we can all think of. 

Yeah - the foot is going to drop on this at some point.  At least I hope it will - because the current approach is just frustrating for everyone.

3)            ES2 has nowhere near enough core game mechanics to really make this game attractive to serious 4X players, the influence system alone is going to get a lot of criticism after release, fans start to get deeper into the game and then realising it has some serious flaws.  Presentation will give it the wow factor but game play will be mediocre at best and ultimately unsatisfying.   

This game needs 2 months extra work on it.  Core system stuff added, 4X end game content.  Space stations, espionage EL style, diplomacy interactions like GAL CIV 3,  Unique map modes for single players, Custom maps and scenario editor at release.  Basic 4X stuff that fans have been asking for from a space 4X for years.  It is just not going to happen in this one, sorry but that is the way it is.  Still its only forty bucks so what can we expect, maybe eighty bucks and we could get the game we all want.

I don't think a lack of mechanics is the problem.  The bigger problem is that the mechanics that are in place are simply not tuned and calibrated enough so that your decisions matter all that much.  Sure, other features can be added down the road, but I'd much rather see the mechanics that are in place improved first before adding anything new.  

See my post below for ideas on improving the existing mechanics.

Alright, in an effort to be more constructive - and despite my intensely worded earlier critique - I really don't think ES2 is in an irrecoverable position. Quite the opposite in fact. I think they are well poised to get this game mechanically compelling - but I don't see that happening in the next month short of a major miracle.

Nevertheless, I like to see the following addressed and/or implemented. Frankly, most of this feels/looks like tweaking the numbers and formulas affecting balance. Here we go:

INFLUENCE
- Re-work the influence growth functions so they aren't based on total cumulative influence gain. Frankly, the situation is game breaking in certain situations. The growth ring needs to be capped to total population capacity (or something similar) and be more dynamic and changing in response to other pressures (wars, etc.)

ECONOMY – OVERALL BALANCE
- The economy desperately needs to be re-balanced to make choices about what to build where more important and strategic. Right now, building everything everywhere is almost always the right choice. Upkeep costs are really the only mechanic currently in place (since there is no building slot system or anything else to restrict development) but those costs do not scale nearly enough with your economic growth. Greatly increasing upkeep would prompt players to be more mindful of what gets built where and lead to more planetary specialization as a choice.

For example - what if upkeep costs in a system basis scaled with each new system development? Sure, you might have some core worlds/systems big enough to support everything – but for other worlds you'd want to focus on as few of buildings as you needed to emphasize certain outputs. I'd skip building +Industry buildings on systems planned to be research hubs for example.

ECONOMY – Food
In my almost 40 hours with the game – I don't think I've ever built +food buildings. Food doesn't really matter enough IMHO, and +food buildings should perhaps serve other uses in the game. Ideally, if food were a global resource then you might have an incentive to specialize food production on certain high fertility worlds (especially if coupled with escalating development costs) to help support your overall empire. Suddenly, blockading an opponent's food world would have serious implications for your entire empire! (nothing like that exists currently).

ECONOMY – Trade
Great ideas – but understanding the pros and cons of different trade HQ and subsidiary options is completely opaque. The "Economy Scan" (Trade Scan) is a useless screen and could repurposed into something functional as a sort of trade route planner. Have that be the interface for upgrading your trade companies as well.

ECONOMY – Build Orders
The game needs a custom build queue system (preferably doing away with the AI governors entirely) and more intelligence in how it handles manual overrides. Copy + paste from Starbase Orion.

Alternatively (though not as good), make the system list page function in a way so you can select a particular development(s), have it highlight systems without that development, and then be able to select which of those system queues you'd like to add that development to. Like a development painter. Starbase Orion also did this with its filtering system. Seriously – PC 4X gamers are getting shown up by a freaking iPhone game bigly.

ECONOMY – Rush Building
Consider adding temporary happiness (or other output) penalties for rush building things.  As it is, rush building is way too powerful and pervasive with absolutely no feedback.  It under cuts the need to do any sort of planning in the game.

ECONOMY – Population Management
Moving population between planets WITHIN a system needs to provide more information about the selected populations per resource bonuses across the planets. Figuring out which species to move to what planet is a total PitA.

Likewise, moving pops between systems is cumbersome. Why not just be able to drag pops from one planet to another in the System list screen? The whole loading of population onto ships to move to a target system is clunky and unnecessary.

POLITICAL SYSTEM
I think this system needs to be reworked a bit. There is an inherent conflict in the game design where players are encouraged to build & do everything everywhere – which means your political parties inevitably skew towards equal and low representation – locking players out of the higher tier laws and making the whole political process a bit of a sideshow and not all that relevant. Couple ideas to address this:

#1 – Make the party changes far more legible and discrete in response to player action. For instance at the extreme end, if I build an "INDUSTRIAL" development, then there would be a 100% chance that one of my non-industrial aligned population units will flip to industrial. The UI should respond so that as I hover over possible development projects (the senate breakdown changes dynamically, etc.) so I can see the possible impacts. Something like this would help make the process clear and more tangible for players.

#2 – There should be a system whereby you can spend influence on global policies that will buff or nerf the rates of changing parties. Call it a propaganda system perhaps. Basically, if I want to max out on Industrialists ideology, then I could push some policy (consuming influence) so that each time I built a SCIENCE thing (for example) that it was not at all or less likely to flip a population into support of the scientists. Investing lots of influence into propaganda would let you get at higher level laws – but might come with the risk of mass upheaval or unhappiness when the propaganda campaign stops.

POLITICS: Government Types
Maybe the UI screen is just broken – but the UI doesn't provide any information about what the other government types actually do. Aside from getting more law slots, I don't see many advantages for changing to other types of government. This needs to be looked at closely.

RESEARCH
I mostly like the research system as it has evolved. It's a nice combination of an era based and web/tree based system. My only problem is that it is freaking ugly and cumbersome to navigate. It needs more fluid zooming and I'd rather see the older and more evocative thumbnail graphics for the research + tech items rather than the hard to read iconography (or a merging of the both). This could be made a lot more clear.

Ideally, I'd like to see some more technology tree randomization or something - but I don't think that's in the cards for this game.

DIPLOMACY
The tug-of-war bar above the diplomacy options makes no sense to me what-so-ever. It seems to shift depending on my state to tell different types of information? Like when I'm at war it's a measure of war fatigue (somehow? I have no idea what it's telling me at all). Other times its some relationship balance bar? Anyway – it's very difficult to tell what the AI's actual standing/tolerance of me is. Star Drive 2's tolerance system (by comparison) was much more interesting.

WAR FATIGUE
This still needs more work. Example: The Cravers forward settled on me at a location within my empire (Borders were closed, so I don't know how they got in in the first place – but that's other issue). So, I declared war and took the system back. But then …. I couldn't declare peace as my people were not war fatigued enough yet. Uhhhh…okay. So the next 20- turns were spent swatting down one Craver fleet after another (seriously, they lost about 30 ships to my 2 or 3 just running at pikes) before THEY finally said "okay, we've had enough! Peace!" and then I could do the peace thing.

The simplest solution is this: Either side should be able to press for peace at ANY time (whether winning or losing). If the offer is rejected, the rejecting side takes the happiness penalty (as they do now), and the offering side has to wait some number of turns (5?) or events (lost another 3 battles or another system?) before offering peace again. Seems like that would make it simple and would work.

Footnote: Cravers are currently screwed under this system and how they interface with the war fatique system needs be handled differently.

FLEET MANAGEMENT & ACTIONS
The current handling of multi-fleet battles is clunky and unpredictable – and I think simplifying it would not only make the combat resolve more smoothly, but also make battles more exciting and interesting. Couple of thoughts on this:

Problem: For example of a bad thing that occurs: AI send 4-5 ships at one of my systems with each ship in its own fleet. :facepalm:. In order to fight all 4-5 ships, I have to manually split my one big fleet up into smaller chunks so that each can engage a different one of the AI's single-ship fleets. It's a cluster fuck of micromanagement.

Solution(s): One direct & simple approach is to give fleets a number of ACTION POINTS equal to the fleets command point value (or number of ships). If I have a fleet with 7 command points, then I could initiate 7 battles with that fleet over a course of the turn.

Alternatively, and a little more complicated (but more interesting), would be to have a more clear and engaging mechanism for resolving multi-fleet battles. For example: The combat system allows up to three flotillas in combat at a time. All fleets are engaged and "locked" in combat. Players would get a listing of their fleets and each side arranges their fleets in an order of battle.

Battles proceed one-at-a-time with each battle allowing a max of three fleets to be assigned across the flotilla slots at a time. Battles cycle until all fleets have either participated at least once in a battle round or ran away. If ships on both sides are still alive after all fleets have attacked once, the battle remains "locked" and more fleets could arrive as reinforcements to continue the conflict next turn.

COMBAT
I don't mind the combat system in concept – but it could be made far more interesting while still retaining the general approach. A few ideas to this effect:

#1 – Let players manually assign ranges for each flotilla (and remove them from the tactics cards).

#2 – Tactics cards become focused entirely around their bonuses. Tactics would be assigned to flotillas (rather than the whole battle).

This could let you do things like, for example, put short range brawlers into a close range flotilla and assign it a tactics card that draws more enemy fire and reduces damage take, but greatly reduces its own damage output. Suddenly you have a reason to make cool defensive screening ships instead of always just more raw firepower. It opens the possibility for combined arms strategies while retaining the same basic combat resolution system.

It would also make the tactics system more meaningful, as unlocking more slots and card types, when you have the opportunity to assign one card per flotilla, would give you far more tactical flexibility.

#3 – The battle viewer "overview" mode with "scan" turned on is started to get more useful. But the graphic bars around ships are still confusing and I'm not sure what information it's providing. That needs to be more useful.

#4 – Allow players to "simulate" a battle before finalizing your plan. I wish more games made this idea a part of the gameplay. Just a small thought ;)

#5 – Weapons need to be better balanced. Seems to me that lasers (100% long range, 100% medium range, 80% short range, can't really be shot down, etc.) are the clear winners and can respond to almost any situation.

COMBAT – STRATEGIC INFORMATION
The level of information reported on opposing fleets is too great IMHO. Being able to hover over any visible fleet and immediately see it's design and balance of energy vs kinetic weapons & armor means I can, with very little cost, immediately retool my fleets to perfectly counter the AI's fleets the turn before a battle. I would keep that information hidden up until combat starts – maybe only providing a list of the size of different ships in the enemy fleet in advance and an overall measure of off/def strength. Something needs to be done here.

VICTORY CONDITIONS
The basis for scoring and determining victory rankings needs to be much more clear. Why does the victory screen not show your position along with the position of all other races (or even just the one's you've met?). As it is – that screen is mostly useless, and the lack of information means I don't really have the information I need to understand what victory path to pursue and how. It's just – bizarre.

Were all of these things done – I think the game would be greatly improved.

To add one point to your excellent set of suggestions:

I think it would be beneficial if we could assign targeting orders on a ship by ship basis before the battle starts.  Nothing fancy just click on the ship, right click on the target.  It would be totally optional but would be one more tool in the player arsenal to influence combat.

Keep in mind Detla, depending on the ship hull, each has an automatic "type" they target.   Although good luck remembering which targets what.

But still, the game is in Alpha state and not feature complete. Less than a month to go in Beta, test the new features, balance the economy, fix major bugs,...

I am not optimistic.

Excellent list of suggestions, thanks mezmorki.

I would add one thing: I think the game needs a list of all explored systems with detailed informations about each planet.

Some days ago i created an idea about that (LIST OF EXPLORED SYSTEMS).

I think the game is in good shape but needs some months of polish and balancing to really shine.

Fieswurst wrote:

Excellent list of suggestions, thanks mezmorki.

I would add one thing: I think the game needs a list of all explored systems with detailed informations about each planet.

Yes!  It needs this list  badly.

idlih10 wrote:

My biggest gripe is balancing of the different victory requirements, particularly the economic victory. The truce/ownership cap system is skewed heavily towards moderating military expansion, yet nothing is done to moderate progress towards other victory types. For example, economic victory requirements should not only include a fixed dust amount, but also say the need to colonize 3 economic hubs spread across the galaxy that you need to discover and colonize. This also makes for more interesting late gameplay instead of just rushing dust production and sitting back waiting for time to pass like the turn victory.

Another issue is the need to let the player track his victory progress. Win an economic victory by earning a "certain amount" of dust or being ranked second on the economic victory screen is too vague. Exactly how much? What about a "dust meter" to track the victory progress? Such tracking features are also needed for all the other victory types.

In my current game I'm around turn 130.  I'm in second place in score (almost at 1st place)  - but I have no idea what to do to really grow that score beyond just continuing to grow.

But the bigger issue is what you point out in terms of the balance and pacing of the victory conditions relative to each other, and especially how progress is communicated to the player.

- Conquest: it seems absurd to try and control whatever portion of the galaxy it is (50%+?) as it would put the player 3-4 times above their system cap and the happiness penality would wreck your performance.  Not to mention the tedium of managing 30 planets.  The game just doesn't seem to be designed to make this an achievable win.  It really needs to work as a diplomatic victory so that you will collectively with close allies.  Or maybe it's something where if your allies and you have enough systems, you request them to vote for you as the grand chancellor or something and you win.

- Superiority: Controlling everyone homeworld is vastly easier than trying to control a huge amount of total systems. 

- Economic: Doesn't even say what victory threshold is in game?

- Wonder: How many times do I need to build the thing?

- Research: This seems like it would take forever relative to the other victory conditions.  I've never made it close to this one before being in a position to do one of the other ones.

mezmorki wrote:

Fieswurst wrote:

Excellent list of suggestions, thanks mezmorki.

I would add one thing: I think the game needs a list of all explored systems with detailed informations about each planet.

Yes!  It needs this list  badly.

I would be very happy if you could post your feedback and posssible improvements to the idea (maybe the devs are listening...):

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/633-list-of-explored-systems

Unfortunately, regarding the IDEAS, there are 600+ posted, 60+ flagged as a greenlit, and 0.0 listed as implemented.

I'll thumb it nonetheless. 

mezmorki wrote:

Unfortunately, regarding the IDEAS, there are 600+ posted, 60+ flagged as a greenlit, and 0.0 listed as implemented.

I'll thumb it nonetheless. 

Thanks!

I know but i still hope at least some of them getting implemented...

@Zenicetus

I concur.  They have their VIP users - and hopefully they're getting to see and test more frequent patches.  But as you say, some issues and concerns have been present since day 1 and haven't yet been resolved. 

Yep.  I've been in a LOT of EA and betas.  This one is "above average", but still, it's not ready imo.  I'm fairly concerned.    I only hope they do another release for us to beta test before final.  The fact they this is scheduled for release 3 weeks after DoW3 means that putting off release for more testing and polish is even a better ideal.   You don't want a semi buggy; semi finished; meh type release immediately after DoW3,  or you'll never shine past the shadow.