I'm a strategy gamer who have taught classes at the university level on strategic decision making and Game Theory, so take what I have to say with that in mind or with a grain of salt.

I don't think you guys should focus so heavily on making really intensive graphics to make the game "LOOK" cool or to make these storyline quests for each faction. It literally is a massive undertaking that takes up resources and time in your production timeline without actually giving us, the STRATEGY GAMERS, what we want.

WHAT DO STRATEGY GAMERS WANT?

1. Meaningful choices and decisions.

2. Customization, customization, customization.

3. Strategic and tactical depth in terms of nuanced game play styles based upon different "builds".

4. Balanced Competitive Meta, which allows for a fair and competitive multiplayer environment to compete with friends and strangers.

5. Simple and Intuitive controls and User Interface, with neat and succinct Data layout. All Data must be relevant to player Choice and are Actionable... Data that is just fluff without actionable choices is just an eyesore that is ignored at best and a pain to look through at worst.

WHAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY MAKING BASED UPON MY PERSONAL PLAY THROUGHS OF THIS GAME:

1. Immense effort on making the factions visually satisfying and flavorful, by giving questlines, voice overs, and large portions of your budget... THIS IS A WASTE OF YOUR MONEY AND EFFORTS AND WE WON'T ENJOY IT!!! Why? It'll be fun the first time through... THEN, after we watched through all the cinematics and heard all the voice overs once... guess what? There is NO replay value... it brings NOTHING to the player once we've finished a first play through... all that voice acting, cinematics, and questlines will simply be IGNORED after the first play through. I will be asking the question that I'm asking myself now... "WHERE IS MY ABILITY TO CUSTOMIZE MY OWN RACE AND FACTION?" For example... Starcraft II's Legacy of the Void was so focused around cinematics and flashy graphics that they did not understand that the actual units they were making were fucking insanely IMBALANCED... and that one faction, the Terran could just point and click A with their army and kill everything while the Zerg has to Micro like a god with 400 APM in order to be able to respond to the Terran Army... THAT mistake only happened because they were so focused on the graphics... FUCK THE GRAPHICS... you are not making a game for people who play Farm Ville or Skyrim... We don't care about graphics... WE STRATEGY GAMERS are NERDS WHO USE OUR BRAINS... we THINK and we want to play strategy games because we are COMPULSIVE THINKERS... give us something we can really sink our brains into! NOT FLASHY LOOKING VISUAL STORY.... that's called a MOVIE, we can go watch movies at a Movie theater... MAKE A FUCKING STRATEGY GAME WITH STRATEGIC ELEMENTS AND DECISION MAKING PLEASE!!!

2. EXTREMELY cluttered and disorganized information display and user interface that is totally unintuitive. I can't even find where to hire new heroes... or does it even matter in this game? Heroes mattered a LOT in the first Endless Space, and in fact you have to make a decision whether to focus on them and whether to allocate your limited number of heroes as governors or as admirals for your fleets... there was a lot of planning and decisions there... in this current version of the game... not only is it hard for me to even FIND where the hell my hero is and how to hire a new hero, but also I am not even sure there's that much of an impact on my game to spend time tinkering with the Hero... in Endless Space the heroes made a MASSIVE impact... in Endless Space they feel like an after thought.

3. EYE SORE!!! OMFG EYESORE OW OW OW OW... STOP with the extremely disgustingly "detailed" data overload!!! Most of the information displayed are details that I DO NOT NEED TO KNOW!! WHY? Because I can't do anything to influence a LOT of the data in the game... it's just THERE and I can see it but I can't interact with it and therefore since it has NO IMPACT ON MY CHOICES, it is superfluous and irrelevant to my decision making process and therefore it's just there to be an eyesore, plain and simple... REMOVE IRRELEVANT AND EXTRANEOUS DATA!!

4. UI is a disaster... I simply can't find ANYTHING... can't you please make the UI more intuitive by... oh I don't know... HAVE A FREAKING MENU???? The Science tab is there... there's no military tab... no Economy tab... No diplomacy tab... no espionage tab... no ... you get the picture... YOu don't have to reinvent the WHEEL in terms of the UI... the UI of most 4X games are very similar for a very important reason! It's damned frustrating to try to figure out HOW TO make a certain decision within my game becuase I can't actually find the BUTTON to do what I actually want to DO!... It's like Windows 8 all over again... I don't want to have to read a manual on how to shut down my computer! FUKING STOP CHANGING WHAT WORKS!!! Windows 7 was amazingly intuitive and everyone did not need a whole USER MANUAL to use Windows 7... it just made sense because it was laid out the same way Windows systems had always been laid out... then Windows 8 came along and drove everyone up the wall... DO NOT MAKE A WINDOWS 8 WITH ENDLESS SPACE 2!!!! DON"T FUCK WITH MY UI.....

5. Complete overhaul of the Tech Tree... SO a lot of 4X games recently have been trying to do this... but honestly Endless Space (the first one) was hands down the best Tech Tree I've EVER witnessed in the 4X genre and here's why... it's BALANCED... In every multiplayer game, the individual researches almost always came just right on time to save my faction from being annihilated by my opponents. This says to me that the Tech Tree was well thought out in terms of being balanced competitively... that if I chose to go for a military research to gain an early rush advantage, the one going for an economic advantage could have enough of a benefit from their econ to be able to BUY the ships they lack in order to fight the early aggressor off... or the scientist would be able to have a tech advantage that would give them enough of an edge in a military struggle to be able to DEAL with the early military rusher... for example... But what you guys are doing is making a whole new tech tree... there are lots of risks... the first and most important is now nobody knows what researches to get and when to get what... Sooo at present I can't tell at all if it is a balanced system within a competitive setting... Oh and please keep in mind.. 4x? It's a competitive game. If you don't make it balanced around competitive play, then you failed.

6. Finally... are you kidding me with the whole making Hissho into a MINOR FACTION??? The Hissho was my favorite race in the ENDLESS GAME GENRE!!! OUT OF ALL THE TITLES that start with ENDLESS... HISSHO was my favorite faction! PERIOD! THeir faction ability was so flavorful! It made them more fun to play as a military faction than Cravers! I'd pick Hissho over Cravers any day of the week and I'll kick their Craver's asses too! But by removing my favorite faction the Hissho and making them a minor faction... I don't know... I just don't know... WHY ..... why would you do such a thing?! You are alienating fans!

7. DO NOT TRY TO REINVENT THE WHEEL!! Take from what works from other 4x games and make small innovations instead of trying to reinvent the wheel! A lot of new 4X games have been coming out... they all suck HORRIBLY... Literally every single time a new 4x had come out recently I sighed inwardly and said to myself "I'll just go play Endless SPace now..." But Endless Space 2 is IMMITATING THE FAILURES THAT HAVE BEEN COMING OUT LATELY!!! WHY?!! Did you look at their sales and player base? THey all SUCK!! They all made the same mistakes of trying to completely reinvent the genre! SOme did make interesting new innovations but at the same time they also made terrible mistakes... what you guys need to do is take the latest innovations that WORKED and put THOSE into the game and still keep what WORKED from before... Right now you seem to be throwing out eveyrthing that WORKED and are immitating other games the elements they put in that caused their games to FAIL horribly! Lack of Customizability..  Lack of meaningful player choices... Lack of impactful decision making process or depth where the game devolves down to just moving ships around a map and trying to out tech the enemy factions and out expand them as well... 4x should NEVER be about each of the individual X's on their own... it should ALWAYS be a matter of weighing OPPORTUNITY COSTS (Economics concept)... where you could choose either of the 4 directioins to go at any point in the game and there would be opportunity costs... and the player feels CHALLENGED because they have to make the best decisions given the situations... So far most 4X games play the same... there's no meaningful choices... it' sall just doing the same basic bland expansion and then conquest type pattern... and on top of that the ONLY difference and variance in these 4X games is the graphics and how each faction is "Marketed" ... please dont' be those games... Endless SPace was SUCH a brilliant strategic game with so many strategic nuances and meaningful decisions... 

What to STEAL from other games that WORKED:

Stellaris: In depth user customization for their own factions... I think I made over 300 factions for myself... creating a faction was like a mini game in itself and was a fun process... everything else in stellaris is just a carbon copy of what previously existed in the genre... the customization is to die for! STEAL THIS FROM THEM!

Master of Orion: This is a very stale game... no innovations but with the addition of annoying "news" commentators who annoy me and need to just have an option of being turned off... (hint hint... does it remind you of something such as YOUR questlines?) Everything else was pretty bland and generic that weren't innovative. Very little customization and none of it meaningful in any way... the resources were simple but it's like asking for Chess and only getting Checkers... LEARN from Wargaming's mistakes! Don't be Master of Orion! In fact, just be YOU... just be Endless Space! You guys had it right and everyone else got it wrong! Don't try to be like them! THey all suck!

Galactic Civilizations: This game got everything right except for one aspect, they failed to realize that most people can't spend 20+ hours to play a game with their friends... I can only play Gal Civ on my own in single player mode and that is no challenge at all... it feels EPIC and I have total control over every little detail in my empire, but it's NOT a competitive game and therefore fails to reach the full potential of a 4X game.

Civilization V: Civ V got one thing right that was amazing... they get competition! THey actually tried to balance their game for competitive play!! And it IS balanced! You could play any country and make a meaningful go at winning! I mean some factions were better at certain win conditions than others sure, but every faction felt like they had a meaningful way of competing! 

If you can just avoid the mistakes these games made and steal from what works on top of keeping what you had done in Endless Space that worked, you'd have a MONSTER on your hands... you'd make a totally BIG hit game that the "Strategy Gamers" will be talking about for years to come... Right now? Right now you're alienating the Strategy Gamers and making this game more interesting to the people who play games like Skyrim or Fallout... I mean, hey I play those games, but they're NOT strategy games... that's why they have nice graphics... if they had shit graphics I'd probably not play an RPG game... 4X games are NOT RPG games... so don't even go there... graphics is about the least important aspect to a Strategy game... Just look at Starcraft Broodwar... guess what? People still play Starcraft Broodwar... even to this day... what does that say about Strategy Gamers and how much they care about GRAPHICS? Hm?

Please don't make Endless SPace 2 the way you have been making it right now... I guarantee you, if you continue what you're doing with Endless Space 2 and focus so heavily on the RPG and graphical elements, you will LOSE the Strategy Gamers that is your target Audience... STRATEGY GAMERS care about CUSTOMIZATION, CHOICES, and COMPETITION... we could give 2 shits about graphics.

I disagree strongly with point number 1 (I'll be honest - I stopped reading after that because of the way you come across/the tone of your post). 

Spending time on 'flavour' for each faction whether it's the graphical style, soundtrack, or different story quests makes for a much richer experience and gives life to the universe. I seem to recall one of the complaints of Endless Space 1 when it first went into early access was the exact opposite of this, that there was not enough flavour and it felt sterile. Why do we need customisation of the races? I don't believe we do, they are all very unique and solid in their identities and that is part of the universe they are creating and was one of the great strengths of Endless Legend. If you want customisation then we will be able to create an entire custom race - we don't need to modify the existing ones.

It is also not mutually exclusive - just because they are spending time on these things such as graphics it does not mean that other elements such as the strategic gameplay will be neglected. Development is not often an either or proposition, you have multiple people and multiple teams working on different aspects concurrently. 

Well I stopped reading after your first point. It is quite unreadable without any paragraphs.

But to say that a game developer studio should stop „wasting“ his time on creating visual stuff is pretty nonreflective.

Take a look at Aurora for example: http://s181.photobucket.com/user/sublightrun/media/Aurora%20LetsPlay/Thunder.png.html

Aurora is a complex and feature-rich game, without question, but it also looks like a bunch of excel sheets and what I’m searching is an intuitive UI which I love to use. Ironically someone on the 4Xgaming subreddit once wrote he plays this game at work and nobody once recognized that he’s playing a game, they even thought that he must do some crazy complex and important stuff when they took a look at his desktop

Hey dude, you can't write a big wall of text. It's hard to read.

But I agree (partly) with some of the criticism:

1. There is less customizability in Endless Space 2 compared with Endless space 1: shipbuilding, racebuilding and combat.

2. UI is less untuitive. Endless space 1 had a very clear and simple UI. Endless 2 is less intuitive, but maybe I just need to get used to it.

3. Hisho: For some reason the developers decided to make them a minor race. I don't like the Hisho though, but the developers need to understand that some people became fans of their earlier constructed races.

    This might feel like a punch to the stomach for some.

I disagree with graphics, I like better graphics. 

Personally, I'm a bit more conservative. I would be happy if they just remade Endless space 1, with the same UI, same races, same combat system, same race building system.

But with:

- Improved graphix like they have now.

- More races. So the old race plus new ones.

- Improved combat system: I also want to change my combat cards, during auto-resolve battles.

- Overal: small improvements, instead of radically warp the game into something else.

Endless space 2 has the same name as Endless space 1, but it became more like Endless Legends outer space.