Good point about DoW3.  You'd think with Amplitude and Relic both being under SEGA that maybe they would've coordinated that a little better. 

I agree 100%. Thank you for making this thread. In addition to the points you raise, I feel the Ideas section didn't receive as much love from the developers as it merited. The release date has been announced, but the features list doesn't contain any of the greenlighted, wishlisted and otherwise approved ideas. If you turn on the filter on Implemented you get...nothing. 591 ideas submitted and none Implemented yet. Are we going to have crises / end game quests (3rd idea by votes)? Are Cravers going to have a fitting government system? What about other ideas? There are 62 that have been greenlit / marked as must have - it's a lot to do before May 19 and will inevitably add more bugs to the game. Personally, I don't feel it's bug-free enough as it is and with one major faction still to be added, people paying full price at release will end up beta-testing the game. I think it'll turn out good in the end, after a few DLCs and updates, but it's still disheartening and, unless addressed, will be another example of a studio serving up unfinished product to be patched post-release.

P.S. I wonder if anyone else who's been following ES2's Early Access from the beginning felt a bit let down when the Make War not Love event discounted ES2 Early Access by 75%?

I can't write as long as you did mezmorki, but you make me curious about what types of 4X games you find yourself enjoying, because currently I am actually quite enjoying the game right now, and while I agree to some of the flaws you pointed out, I actually found them less of an issue than you did.

Can't say more. Actually, I was surprised a bit when I saw EL2 would be full-released in next month. Playing this game recently, I thought, of course this game is so brilliant and enjoyable, many things were still ready to be revamped, so truth be told, I couldn't be sure that this game would be in ready perfectly in a month.

As a big fan of Endless series, ES1, DotE, EL and now ES2, I don't want players consider this game as 'above average' or 'so-so'. Hope 1 month would be enough.

Seconded mezmorki.  One thing about the pacing though:  I thought resource production was intentionally dialed up during EA to facilitate faster gameplay so that more of the late game could be tested for bugs and such.  Does anyone else recall that?

Sulendil wrote:

I can't write as long as you did mezmorki, but you make me curious about what types of 4X games you find yourself enjoying, because currently I am actually quite enjoying the game right now, and while I agree to some of the flaws you pointed out, I actually found them less of an issue than you did.

Someone on Steam asked me the exact same thing.... check my reply there:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/explorminate/discussions/0/541907675758973640/?ctp=49#c135514649164143852

I don't agree with everything in the post, but there is some valid criticism there. 

If there is one thing that worries me the most about the current status, it's that the devs have said (IIRC) that there won't be another patch for EA user feedback before the final phase and release. There are some game mechanics right now like influence spread/lack of rollback, food abundance, economic surplus, etc. that are arguably "broken" and need some severe balance adjustment. 

The Amplitude devs must be very confident that they can balance all this in-house, without outside EA user feedback. 

I seem to remember more intermediate patches released for user feedback in the Early Access period for ES1 and EL, compared to this project. Frankly I've been surprised that we're just getting these big "Phase" releases and not much else except for a minor hotfix here and there. It may be one reason for the relatively low forum participation. There just isn't that much to talk about, once problems have been identified and then left there for months.

So I originally posted the below on the eXplorminate steam forum thread covering ES2.  But I'm re-posting it here for discussing - and perhaps also as forewarning for the dev team on what some reactions are to the current state of the game and its imminent (May 19th) release.  Needless to say, I'm quite worried about the state of the game and finding my well of optimism drying up. 

For reference, here was my Update 1 feedback thread, of which the criticisms still stand.

Here we go (I was playing on hard this time around BTW):

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So, after 6 or so hours with EA release 3 I hit “the wall.”  The wall for me is that moment when you stretch back in your seat and ask yourself “why am I playing this game?”  It’s the moment where the spell is broken and you’re no longer absorbed in the gameplay, but rather playing on auto-pilot.  Needless to say, for me, this isn’t a good thing.

I think ES2 has three major issues, which I’ll discuss in more detail.  But briefly they are:  #1 - The underlying game design doesn’t lead to deep or interesting strategic decisions.  #2 - The UI, and much of the game’s overall thrust, emphasizes aesthetic glam over functionality and information conveyance.  This compounds with #1 in some unpleasant ways.  #3 - The pacing and balance is just off and, I feel, even undermines what little strategic interest there might be in the game.

Let’s break these down a little.

#1 - Decision Depth & Interest 

As I mentioned a few comments back, decisions in this game largely fall into one of two camps: Either they are trivial decisions about sequencing something (i..e Tech A then Tech B? The other way around?), which is not very interesting and not strategic (it’s puzzle solving). Or, decisions are so clear-cut and important to basic gameplay and survival that they are the obvious moves (e.g researching lots of essential technologies, picking the battle tactics card that most optimizes your range compatibility, etc.. ).

Over the course of playing, and getting into wars with AI empires, and colonizing, and performing most activities in the game - I rarely feel like I’m making an interesting strategic choice.  There aren’t enough consequences or limitations on your actions to create an environment where you have to make tough trade-offs.  You can always have your cake and eat it too.

What you DO end up doing is a lot of menial tasks: swapping out weapon modules for the latest version then upgrading all of your fleets, cycling through your dozen colonies to queue up the next unlocked system development for construction, cycling through all your survey ships to mindlessly launch probes and explore anomalies.  Sending colony ships to practically every planet you can colonize, queuing up the next batch of research, and so on.  When I'm doing these things, I feel like the game is wasting my time - especially when there are ways the drugdery could be taken out of it (mass orders, custom build queues, etc.).

Overall, there just isn’t much tension or challenge or constraints forcing me to make tough and interesting decisions.  I think a good strategy game absolutely needs to do this.

#2 - The UI: A study in form over function 

ES2 has a number of compelling ideas and mechanics: the political system with its interplay of governments and laws, minor factions, trade route networking, etc.  Unfortunately, the UI and the way many of these mechanics (and even other more typical mechanics) are conveyed to the player through the UI and its “info graphic” approach is cumbersome and confusing.

For example, consider the empire + victory progress UI screen, which lists what place you are in terms of achieving different victory conditions.  This explains some basics, but doesn’t provide nearly enough information for me to actually understand how or why I’m in a certain position or indeed what my competitors are doing to put them ahead or behind me.  Mousing over the End Turn button shows each empire’s score - is that the same as the score victory placement (I think so).  If I have 965 score - what is contributing to that score?  How does the game tell me specifically what I need to do to raise my score? Is it only a function of population and how many anomalies I’ve discovered? How does doing those things affect my score?  This UI page, as attractive as it is, tells me almost nothing useful.

The above was one of the lesser offenders.  The other scans and overlays in the game are worse.  The entire operation of how actions in game affect population units political affinity, and how that translates into the election process is terribly opaque - despite all the fancy population and system scans and slick vote tabulation viewers.  

The critical failure here is not only are these UI screens not very useful, but that the pertinent information is needed at the point when you are making a decision in the game, to be used as an input or factor to assess your options.  It’s one thing to know that building a +Industry development is associated with the industrial faction - but can anyone tell me what the exact impact of building one more +industry versus a +military is on a given system? And even if it was clear what the impact was - would it even really matter to the strategy?

And at the end of the day - does it really even matter? This is where issue #2 intersects with #1.  The political system for example is not a coherent enough (via the UI) or impactful enough of a mechanic to be really be worth worrying about.  I am not going to avoid building +Industry buildings for example - because I need industry for everything, especially when you can convert excess industry into more Dust or Research, which is always needed.

There are a host of other UI issues throughout the game: poorly explained manpower, hard to parse technology disk/web/thing, no system finder, no information about where to place trade HQ’s and subsidiaries, a UI that relies on too many different approaches (dedicated screens vs UI tabs, vs. scan overlays, etc.) and lacks coherency.  Diplomacy mechanics are completely opaque (and diplomacy itself is bog standard - don't be convinced its otherwise). When I'm changing governments, the UI screen showing my options doesn't actually say what the other government types do ... only how the election process is different. On and on...

#3 - Pacing & Balance 

One of my issues with ES1 and EL on launch, which repeats itself in ES2, is that the details and fine-tuning of balance and pacing seemed to be lacking - and the result was that the pacing and balancing never felt like where it should be.  This is a significant cause for alarm because it affects people’s overall impressions of their experience more than just about anything else.  Some specific issues:

By 100 turns into my current game I’m generating +600 dust per turn and +500 influence per turn.  I’m basically swimming in resources and if I have any sudden needs I can insta-buy my way out of any problem. Need a fleet of warships?  No problem, I can build about 20 warships in 2 turns.  Heck, I’m even at a point where I can consistently use influence to insta-buy technology.  If I’m short on a strategic resource I can purchase all of a given stock from the market without thinking about it.  And apparently I’m only in third place on the economy victory ranking.  The economy needs to be reigned in badly, because resource limitations are about the only hard constraint the game throws at you.  But in their absence, its results in mindless “build everything, everywhere” approach.

Another issue is influence.  Influence (the extent of the galactic map)  for certain factions grows WAY too quickly, and more worryingly doesn’t adjust nearly dynamically enough.  If one of my planets is falling under foreign influence, and I then wage a war to capture the influencing planet - the influence border doesn’t change fast enough to liberate my other planet.  In my current game, my influence extends over 4-5 systems of one enemy faction and another 3-4 of a different faction, and is continuing to grow with no end in sight.  The way influence is handled has been criticized for the past 3-4 months on the forums, but there’s been little change or acknowledgement.

Combat continues to remain a bugbear for ES2.  I do think it’s getting better at a mechanical level now, but again it’s something where the fancy UI gives an impression that there is more going on or more depth to be found than there is.  In reality, you pick the tactics that best matches your weapon range 95% of the time, and everything else is just noise.  If you get into a war, upgrading your ship design to counter your opponent’s ships is easy (especially when you’re flush with resources) allowing you to game the AI to a pitiful degree.  Again, there are no hard consequences or lasting decisions in the game.

Wrap-Up 

There’s more I could rant about it - but I’ll spare you all that for now.  ES2 has some great ideas and a gorgeous aesthetic presentation.  Some of its most lauded features, such as exploration, I find in practice to be pretty mundane and repetitive (so not really a selling point).  The quest system is well done and interesting, and if the Endless lore is of interest that is certainly a potential highlight of the game.  But none of that really makes up for a lack of depth in the game.  And what’s worse is that many features are so convoluted in their presentation - while at the same seeming to have a trivial or irrelevant consequence on gameplay - that I’m not sure why they even exist at all.  At times, I feel like the game is trying to make itself appear more complicated than it is - as if using its own complicated appearance as a proxy for depth.  That’s a really odd spot to be in.

I had high hopes for ES2 given the success of EL and the range of ideas they wanted to bring into the game.  Right from the start of the EA process it seemed like the game had a long ways to go.  I remained optimistic - but as time wore on it became clear that they  (the devs) were not going to deviate from their initial 4-release roadmap and I think it’s going to majorly hurt the game’s perception at launch. At a minimum they need another balance and polishing update once the game is actually feature complete - but that doesn’t appear to be in the cards (at least before release).  As an aside, forum activity has slowed down considerably - especially from the more critical + constructive posters - and I wonder whether that’s a harbinger of people’s waning interest. There is still so much to be improved big and small (heck, a random minor faction population still starts on your homeworld every game … seriously!?) - but with a May 19th release date I don’t see it happening.

Tough love.

Zenicetus wrote:

. 

If there is one thing that worries me the most about the current status, it's that the devs have said (IIRC) that there won't be another patch for EA user feedback before the final phase and release. 

It is more likely just being forced due to deadlines.Balance is unlikely until a few patches.To be be fair that is the general pattern in 4x games.

Alright, lemme drop in some of my own opinion on balance and such. For me, I think the game is properly balanced to finally launch. A lot of people have said and argued that ES2 is far from being finished and should not be dropped from EA. However, I think an important thing we should take into consideration is that Amplitude is acting under a publisher (Sega) and they might not have all the time in the world. 

Now, I'm very curious about people talking about balance. Call me daft but I think the game and factions are pretty much balanced now (maybe except the Sophons). Before going on, note that most of my experiences are from multiplayer (which includes AI at hard difficulty and human players). The games I played were usually fair unless you end up with shitty planets in the early game.  To counter-act the point that you are making a lot of output; you are gonna need as much as you can because your enemies also have a hell lot of output. Sure, you can spam out tons of ships but your enemies can also do the same. This is a design philosophy which I love. None of the factions are balanced but instead over-powered in their own little ways. Now, influence is a different thing as I have not played enough matches with people who generate tons of influence so I can't really  judge influence. On the economy however, I do not think that needs to be severely changed. Speaking of OP's +600 dust per turn and +500 influence per turn, I think that a lot of people seem to forget or not notice the important mechanisms of dust inflation. Let me go on that further in the next paragraph.

In one game, I was out-putting 3.6k dust (total ship costs were at around 500 dust) per turn. Meanwhile my friends were doing roughly about 500 dust per turn. However, they had much more ships than me. I thought I could output plenty of ships too (for example, one of my system could shell out 4 cruisers/battleships per turn) but unfortunately, I lacked resource deposits. I thought it would be simple to just purchase them from the market but due to how much dust I was making, dust inflation was very high and I couldn't afford as much as I wanted to. Ideally, this help balance out factions with too much output and serves to make a economically focused faction not too over-powered. Colonizing carefully is very important in the game and I may even add, very strategic. You may choose to settle in a planet filled with a strategic resource, but it could be constantly harassed by pirates and the amount of output expected would be much lower. There are also the decisions at what time you should expand. I started with only 2 planets but when I had sufficient output, I managed to quickly open up 8 systems due to amount of food I was making. Others started off with plenty of systems but in the late game, they were hindered by several things such as over-population penalties and lack of proper output (not making as much output as their enemies). They were still doing well just not as well as their enemies.

In conclusion, I think the game has some real deep mechanics but it's not very good at showing what it can do. I just wish a popular youtuber or streamer will highlight and explain the mechanics of the game so that more people would understand and possibly think better of the game.

I think the post is a bit harsh, after all we are in an Alpha, and the game looks quite well and completed ATM.

I have similar feeling in some of the points about strategic choices, but I'm optimistic, as EL is one of my favorite 4x game of all time, and really felt you have lots of strategic choices during your games.

About how community should influence in the final product, I think you are overdoing it. After all is THEIR product, they live from the results, and while community can certainly help to polish or highlight some issues, it shouldn't dictate many aspects of the game.

Ninakoru wrote:

I think the post is a bit harsh, after all we are in an Alpha, and the game looks quite well and completed ATM.

I have similar feeling in some of the points about strategic choices, but I'm optimistic, as EL is one of my favorite 4x game of all time, and really felt you have lots of strategic choices during your games.

About how community should influence in the final product, I think you are overdoing it. After all is THEIR product, they live from the results, and while community can certainly help to polish or highlight some issues, it shouldn't dictate many aspects of the game.

Agreed. However, keep in mind that the game is going to be released tomorrow.

Zennock wrote:

Agreed. However, keep in mind that the game is going to be released tomorrow.

lar feeling in some of the points about strategic choices, but I'm optimistic, as EL is one of my favorite 4x game of all time, and really felt you have lots of strategic choices during your games.ictate many aspects of the game.

Heh, I did that error too!

Its MAY, we are in April, they have one full month to tweak/polish the game :)