This is a tough post to write, but having read a lot of the discussions on the forums so far, it's struck me as something that needs to be pointed out and addressed specifically. It's also going to be a long and rambling one, because I'm a fanboy, and this is probably going to serve as a case study in why you should never be a fan of anything. I don't blame anyone for choosing not to read it, but much as I'm sure Shamus Young felt a lot better after writing a novel-length analysis of the Mass Effect series, I'm hoping to find some solace in collecting all of my thoughts and gathering them in one place for other people to read.

I believe most of the disagreement and distaste over many of the mechanics of ES2 can be effectively explained with one observation: Endless Space 2 is not a sequel to Endless Space. It may look like Endless Space, but when one looks at the mechanics and systems holding the game together, it becomes readily apparent that this is just Endless legend wearing the skin of Endless Space. I've thought and searched for a while now, and haven't been able to identify a single mechanic in ES1 that has made it into this game, at least not without having been changed drastically.

The game is certainly not suffering in Steam user reviews, and has enjoyed positive impressions from critics as well. While there is a lot of frustration on the forums over specific mechanics, such as the tech tree or forced truces, the general consensus seems to be that the problems lie in the implementation of these features, and at least one poll suggests that the majority of players would rather see the current system improved than the old system returned. Given how broken some of the core mechanics are, the amount of positivity is startling.

And maybe that is because, as I said, I'm a fanboy; Endless Space was one of my favorite 4X games ever, and is certainly my favorite game made by Amplitude. Whatever I could have expected from an Endless Space sequel, Endless Legend was not even on my radar. While I enjoyed Endless Legend, it didn't leave much of a lasting impression on me; but it may be safe to assume, based on the response to ES2, that EL resonated much more strongly with more people than ES has. Another point here is that I didn't look up too much information on the game; this was a sequel to one of my all-time favorites, made by one of my favorite developers, so what did I have to fear?

Whatever the case, this goes back to the title: the direction of Endless Space 2. More specifically, what is the direction of Endless Space 2? It's clearly not going in the direction of Endless Space 1, but it's also so fundamentally different from Endless Legend that it's hard to describe the game as going in that direction. Without delving into a long-winded analysis of the two, one key reason all of the mechanics worked so well in Endless Legend was that you could colonize anywhere from the start, but you also couldn't spread your city across an entire region - you made a choice where to place it in a given location. But in Endless Space 2, you can only colonize an extremely limited selection of planets, and your ability not to colonize everywhere is completely arbitrary in comparison. To no small extent, this makes it extremely difficult to assess what game Endless Space 2 is supposed to look like; and as beta testers, that means it is that much more difficult to provide useful feedback on how to improve it. Should we be given more control in battles, on par with Endless Legend? Should we be able to research every tech and colonize every planet, as was the typical endgame of Endless Space? The lack of focus in the game's design leads to a lack of focus in these discussions, and it's difficult to differentiate between what works best for the game versus what people just want from the game.

Ultimately, I don't think Amplitude should be free of criticism for this. It's really painful to say something negative about them, because their catalogue is impossible to argue with - they've released three fantastic games, supported them tremendously well after launch, and paid much attention to user input all along the way. But seeing what they've done with Endless Space 2, I think it would be fair to say that sequels may not be one of their strong points. While all of the mechanics in Endless Space 2 could certainly be made to work, and none of them are necessarily bad, that's no justification for these radical changes. When making a sequel, you're not just piecing mechanics together to see what works, you're changing something that was already in place - and you need to be able to explain why the change makes the game better. Endless Space 2 could be made to work with the new technology system, but does it make the game better than it would be with the old tech tree? What advantages does "force truce" have over the previous diplomacy systems? You could ask a similar question of virtually every mechanic in the game, and that's a bad sign. The next time Amplitude makes a sequel, I would be wary, now that I've been burned.

There are two takeaways I intend from this post. First, Amplitude should make it clear what path they want Endless Space 2 to take. Endless Space and Endless Legend have two completely different gameplay loops, and they'll need to commit to one and make it abundantly clear to players for them to be able to provide the best feedback possible. And second, to those players, I would suggest trying to keep in mind what perspective criticisms come from - if complaints of a system are rooted in a preference for Endless Space, or if the mechanic itself is broken. As for me, I'm not sure I'll be able to spend any more time with ES2, and I was unable to get a refund. I just hope this post manages to be helpful to people in the end.

I have struggled in my time on here to not utter the phrase "design schizophrenia" but reading your argumentation here kindoff made it sink in for me. So many contradictory systems, stated goals that do not in any way mesh with actual implementation and systems and the persisten taste of endless legend desperatly trying to fit the shoes of endless space and failing miserably at it are hard to argue with. From a certain point of view I can see the rationale: EL was succesfull and praised, ES was more of a sleeper hit. Naturaly doing more EL seems like a good ideea right? iterating and improving it. Of course the fundamental problem is that this game is not Endless Legend 2, it's Endless Space 2, a game with completely different roots and aproach to gameplay. Trying to make these 2 games have a baby right now seems to have produced a very ... "special" kind of child and unless amplitude take a long hard look in the mirror and decide what game they are actualy trying to make, it's not looking that good. Mind you, I have enjoyed my romps in ES 2 and I don't regret my time in it, but the thing is ... there is a large after-taste of conflicting design goals and themes that acompanies this game and I haven't been able to make myself get into it again after I had to take a break for IRL reasons.

I'm not sure how to sum it up in totality - but reading the game design documents prior to the EA release had me very excited.  For one, they were trying to make the internal empire management aspects of the game interesting with the inclusion of politics, parties, etc.  This is similar what Stellaris was attempting with it's faction system - but so far Stellaris hasn't really delivered that promise.  ES2 seems closer to the mark but it's still early in the development - so who knows.

Overall, I was impressed by the GDD's in terms of Amplitude's willingness to be a little more abstract (or even "game-y") with the systems in the interest of putting important player decisions front and center while minimizing micro and many of the tedious aspects of 4X games that drag them out forever.  I think they are trying to create a deeper and more compressed game - which I've been hoping to see from someone.

The problem, however, is all in the implementation of these ideas.

Hence the game suffers, even more than their prior games (which was a point of criticism with those as well) from the feeling that it is playing itself.  The decision spaces are so compressed and tight that there really isn't much room for the player to make actually interesting decisions - despite that being the primary intent of the game.  We see this in a number of instances:

• Combat battle plans having little player input because the optimal choice always obviously follows from your ship designs
• Technology tree filled with so many essential and critical techs (colonization, diplomacy, etc) that you end up just adjusting the order slightly but progress through the same way each time regardless
• Limited colonization options forces you to expand in the few places where you can
• Forced truce mechanics ending wars prematurely and not providing very divergent outcomes
• Expansion penalties forcing your empire to conform to a certain size expectation, to heck with other considerations
• System exploration not offering enough interesting choices / trade-offs
• System development being the case of "build everything everywhere" for the most part.
• RPS combat mechanics neutralizing any tactical advantages of pursuing one weapon type over another
• Political system mostly just happening "to you" as opposed to giving you more nuanced/interesting choices

The only real decision in the game is the choice of when to build ships and press military maneuvers over producing something else in your systems.  Oh maybe leader skill advancement.  Most of the other decision spaces railroad you down a certain logical course of action I feel. 

So that's my current frustration.  The game sounds awesome on paper - but all of the weakest parts of their prior games have somehow been magnified and brought to the fore in ES2.  I know the dev team has more in the works for later in the EA process, but there are some fundamental issues that the community has provided a lot of feedback on that need to be addressed.  I'm worried to say the least.

XDAvenger93 wrote:

Naturaly doing more EL seems like a good ideea right? iterating and improving it.

Granted, they've been doing that - Endless Legend has almost $60 in expansions, they've been developing it constantly. Making a sequel to Endless Legend at this point would be silly, especially since there's no way it could hope to have as much content as Endless Legend now has. Meanwhile, Endless Space only ever got one expansion - maybe they've just been bored of that game for a long time now? Either that or Disharmony must not have done very well for them. I would have been more than happy to pay for more Endless Space DLCs, though.

mezmorki wrote:

Hence the game suffers, even more than their prior games (which was a point of criticism with those as well) from the feeling that it is playing itself.  The decision spaces are so compressed and tight that there really isn't much room for the player to make actually interesting decisions - despite that being the primary intent of the game.

I couldn't agree with this more. They've spent so much effort making all these "simulations" be logical and believable, such as the senate, but in terms of gameplay it's not exactly fun to feel like you have no influence over such major mechanics. While that will almost certainly change by the game's release, the current state of all these mechanics and features suggests that Amplitude's priorities are not entirely in line with player expectations. Which, again, is a bad sign for a sequel.

You also touched on another point that's bothered me: the GDD's. As I said, I hadn't read them before launch, and I wondered if I may have been more prepared for what we got if I had been reading them. But going back to them, there's no way they gave the right impression: they never once explained anything in terms of Endless Space, but rather, in comparison to "previous games." Aside from being a great way of letting readers project their own expectations, it also pretends that Endless Space and Endless Legend are more similar than they actually are. Endless Legend wasn't an iteration of Endless Space, it was a completely different game with completely different mechanics, and the current state of ES2 proves it. Going back to my original point, if they had been more blunt with their comparisons to Endless Legend, and made it clear to players that this is going to be a very different game from what they [rightfully] expect, I wouldn't be so upset about Endless Space 2. Yet again, this just shows a conflict between Amplitude's goals and player expectations.

By the by, I don't really know where else to post this, but it's topical enough to here.

Essentially, nearly a week ago I posted a Steam review for the game that was effectively an abridged version of this post here. Hours later, some other guy edited their existing review and copy-pasted my review over it. I'm not really sure what to do about it, I (and a few other people hopefully) have reported him days ago and Valve has done nothing about it so far, possibly still in the same mindset they were in when they said it was okay for users to reupload other people's mods and sell them for cash. I've also now had at least one person accusing me of stealing the review from him, and presumably already gotten a ton of downvotes because of it, which is almost laughable when you look at his review history and look at mine. Well, it would be laughable, if it weren't so frustrating.

I'm not sure if more people reporting him would actually do anything, but if there's anything you can do to affect the situation, it would be greatly appreciated. It'd be really stupid on Valve's part if I need to DMCA a review...

The thing is: do you think those "glowing" steam reviews area actualy reflective of the actual fan reaction when these forums have been aflame consistently with the same main talking points for a while now? You may have posted a review fenrak, but I have not for example, but I fully intend to do it once I see how the game evolves during this early acces and if the criticism raised here is adresses. And to steal a point from mezmorki in a reply he made to my thread of criticism: they don't exactly need to tear down the entire system. There is quite a decent and interesting degree of complexity going on under the hood of the game, IF only we were given the chance to interact with it and influence it instead of us beeing passive observers. They don't need to tear the game down and rebuild it to be more ES, they need to give us back control and admit to the rather small overall number of systems that do demand a large sweeping rework (the tech system mainly).

Point is: much like Hobesian pointed out in another thread, the curent state of steam reviews is nothing more than blind fanboy hype for amplitude doing a new game. WHEN this actualy releases and if it releases in what these forums have complained is curently a problematic state that does not look to be getting any corections, then amplitude might have a rude awakening as steam review scores plumet. I imagine I'm not the only one who refrains from posting EA reviews on principle because I don't view EA as worth accesing UNLESS you truly have faith in the project and want to get involved sooner, in which case you don't care if it's flawed because you believe it can be fixed.

XDAvenger93 wrote:

And to steal a point from mezmorki in a reply he made to my thread of criticism: they don't exactly need to tear down the entire system. There is quite a decent and interesting degree of complexity going on under the hood of the game, IF only we were given the chance to interact with it and influence it instead of us beeing passive observers. They don't need to tear the game down and rebuild it to be more ES, they need to give us back control and admit to the rather small overall number of systems that do demand a large sweeping rework (the tech system mainly).

Emphasis my own - this is where I feel you misunderstand my point/perspective. My point was not that they need to make the game more like ES for it to be good - while I make snide remarks about the new direction, I also said in my previous post that it would be better for the game's sake if they not compromise the game's design to make it appeal more to ES fans. My point, rather, is that as a sequel, there is a (in my mind very justified) expectation for the game to be similar to be its predecessor; at an absolute minimum, it should be enjoyable for the same reasons the previous game was enjoyable. Endless Legend and Endless Space are very different games that are enjoyable for very different reasons, and the current state of Endless Space 2 suggests that it is aiming to have more of an Endless Legend appeal than an Endless Space appeal. I do believe, as I said in the original post, that Amplitude shouldn't be let off the hook for that, especially since the version of ES2 they sold to us suggests that the systems of these games are entirely incompatible.

But to get back to that sentence I highlighted: If the game is ever going to be acceptable as a sequel to Endless Space, they will have to tear it down and rebuild it. There are too many systems and mechanics thrown in there that are antithetical to the Endless Space formula, and there are effectively zero mechanics returning from the original. The actual disagreement here is whether or not they need to make it more like ES in the first place; and again, I do think the game could eventually be good, even if they commit to this direction. I just also don't think that means we should forgive them so easily, is all.