DesertFoxx wrote:
The vanilla was far from perfect, but the game has improved a lot, mostly due to active community input and Amplitude's willingness to listen to the players.

Some may say a product should be in its most optimal state when it's released, but this is difficult even for most established companies. Even Starcraft was not perfect at release and had its own game-breaking balance issues until Blizzard patched it. Take a look at Diablo II. Everyone thinks it has always been perfect, but people forget that DII had a lot of issues as well in the beginning, something DIII players seem to forget. I believe Diablo III is also undergoing improvements due to complaints.



I think Amplitude will constantly improve the game and gain more credibility over time. The rest is up to marketing.

If they introduce another expansion set with campaigns, improved visuals (i.e. invasion), teams, and ladder systems, I will considering purchasing it, given that Disharmony improves some more, although I am already quite satisfied.



Foxx

Headshot right there!!!

Well said. #1 is the reason why I bother with Endless Space at all; and #2 is the real goal of the mods I create.

I've been recently browsing the back history of the forums, so not just recent posts, but threads dating back to the beginning.

Things I find interesting

• The number of noticeably non-native English speaking posters in the threads is much higher than any other forum I have visited. (This isn't good or bad, it simply is. Potentially because Amplitude is French).
• The number of defenders of ES who state that the game is fine as it is, typically based on single player experiences.
• The number of players of ES who like the game, but think it has noticeable flaws, typically based on multiplayer experience.
• The generally aggressive actions of detractors of ES. (So many threads about how ES is the worst game ever, generally.)
• The generally aggressive actions of defenders of ES against people who find flaws in the game. (So many posts in the previously mentioned threads about how the creator of the thread is wrong, regardless of the validity of his comments.)
• The number of people who swear by "invincible" dreadnaught designs and fleets.
• The number of people who demonstrate that "invincible" dreadnaughts always are weaker than destroyer glass cannons at an economic level.
• These two observations have been true since the very beginning and seem to be consistent, regardless of the combat mechanics implemented at the time.
• The general confusion as to combat mechanics, especially flak & missiles. I'm not sure when ES allowed for the extremely open ended modding it does now, but that should have been sufficient to explore and document the combat system quite extensively, if people had the interest in it.
• The number of people who make a few posts and then disappear.
• The general focus on peripheral issues and not major underlying game mechanic flaws, especially ones that would potentially change the underlying issue that leads to the status of the peripheral detail.
• The relative different experience level in posters when it comes to the 4X Space Empire genre. Many posters have portfolios that include iconic games such as Stars!, Masters of Orion I,II,& II, Sword in the Stars I & II, Space Empires 4 & 5, Galactic Civilizations I, II, & Dark Avatar, Ascendancy, Spaceward Ho!, and Imperium Galactica I & II (not to mention basic 4X titles like Civ 1-5, MOM, Alpha Centauri, etc or pseudo-4Xs like Star Control 1-3, Sins of a Solar Empire, etc, or some of the new members such as StarDrive and Distant Worlds). However, many only have experience with only a few titles from this list. These two groups also have very divergent experiences and opinions of ES.
  
  

Why does it matter, because more fruitful discussions follow from knowing the past and not repeating those mistakes or patterns.

So where does that put us?

• 4x games are all about building a race engine within a certain theme.
• Winning relies on building the best engine at achieving a certain goal in the framework of people throwing spanners in your engine (i.e., attacking you).
• Conflict occurs in a variety of domain, economic, industrial, political, influence, but is primarily ship to ship combat.
• What we really want is two part
  
  [list=1]
• Pretty space ships blowing up other pretty spaceships in a very pretty way.
• A sensible and understandable system of building our spaceship fleets to accomplish Step 1.
  
  

If combat looked something like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JTTUmkYITc everyone would be very, very happy (The actual full length battle is better than this cut version)

Why hasn't anyone done a x4 Space Sim that has space ships and giant robots (Mecha, Gundams, Orbital Frames, Zords, Voltron, whatever)

[/list]



So what does this all mean in regards to how well is ES doing?

The answer, it seems, depends on who you ask.

Tridus wrote:
So you think the devs plan was to make an expansion marketed primarily around a new faction, and then deliberately make that faction suck so that only "veteran" players could use them?

I mean that they have made many changes in Disharmony.



And it's natural for game designers to make something different at this moment.



But the changes are too many and it is like putting too many eggs in a basket.



You can't be sure that every change satisfies the majority.



Some are satisfied like me, but some have big issues about them.



So if the new faction is a change that has great popularity, it will make the devs easier.



The Harmony doesn't have that popularity like what Automations have, if it is not true, please correct me.



And my reasonable proposal is that the devs should try it next time.



However, the devs are not morons and the Harmony doesn't suck at all. People win with it and share the experience. And it will be better.



You probably have your reasons about all the stuff you mentioned, but I think Disharmony can be better if the devs focus on those really important things.



The AIs don't use the new mechanisms well and that's a pity because the gameplay can be more interesting if they do.



It is already great now in my experience on Endless difficulty.



And I believe that the devs will make it happen in no time.



The tier of the weapon thing never happens to me because I have the habit to make sure that valuable resources are safe on Endless difficulty.



But, of course, it is not an excuse and I think the devs have fixed it in Beta. I just try to explain why it doesn't bother me.



And about the more tiers of weapons thing, I think it is awful to go back to the Classic design.



In my experience playing Disharmony, that's not a problem because there are many ways to enhance your military, and I don't feel that the old design is more strategically interesting.



The defense system works just fine for me, and I think it will be absurd if I have to say that something is not fun, but I played it and I think it is fun.



Defeating the enemies on Disharmony Endless difficulty is fun. If you wouldn't like to do so, how can you feel fun about it? I think it will be very boring to discuss more because there is nothing to share.



And it will be very difficult and tedious to discuss if there is nothing in common, and it should stop here.

cgboy2003 wrote:
Other problems you mentioned in your earlier posts are not problems for me at all.



If there is any misunderstanding, please let me know.

I only made one post (two if you count this one) in this thread so maybe you are confusing me with someone else?

cgboy2003 wrote:


I mean that the core of Disharmony should be the new faction, the Harmony, but the Harmony is obviously not for everyone.



So I guess that the devs try to satisfy the experienced players who don't think that Endless difficulty is a problem and who are willing to accept the challenge.

So you think the devs plan was to make an expansion marketed primarily around a new faction, and then deliberately make that faction suck so that only "veteran" players could use them?



If that was the idea, it's a really good way to kill the company. Nobody sane deliberately sets out to make some factions suck, especially if their plan is to then market that. It's a recipe for disaster (and a bad metacritic score).

And I don't think that the tiers of weapons and the ship design are any problems.

So you don't think it was a problem that if you researched a new weapon and didn't have the resouce for it, you were unable to place ANY tier of that weapon on ships? Like you forgot how to make the one you were just making last turn? How does that make any sense at all?



That's not balance, that's just fundamentally broken. It's a terrible design decision. They're fixing it in the new patch, but that it was released at all with something so obviously broken casts a very bad impression on just how much time was spent on Disharmony prior to release.

And the changes should be made with the care for players who might not take it as a challenge.

I don't take stuff that doesn't work as a challenge, I take it as a bug. Same with stuff that's just ridiculous, like how modules get bigger on bigger ships for no apparent reason. Why is a fighter bay bigger on a dreadnaught than a destroyer for the same number of fighter ships? Do the pilots have a swimming pool taking up the extra space? Are crew on a dreadnaught fatter?



Maybe it's possible that none of this stuff bothers you, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with challenge and everything to do with the general design not making any sense and leading to really weird outcomes in how the game actually plays. It's kind of insulting that you think that people are complaining about basic flaws because they're not up to the "challenge". Dreadnaught sensors being several times larger than destroyer sensors (to the point that simply putting a destroyer with sensors on the dreadnaught would be more space effecient than putting sensors on the dreadnaught) is not a problem of challenge, it's just bad design.



I mean a lot of this stuff is now being addressed, but it never should have been released in this state. And a lot of other stuff isn't (the lack of weapon tiers, the overly opaque and complicated defense system that most players just looking at the game info will never actually understand, etc).



(And just for the record, I play single player, and coop games with a friend of mine. Though we've barely played Disharmony after our first couple of games were laggy and incredibly not-fun. The stuff they changed just managed to suck the fun out of the game for us. Maybe the patch will fix it, I'm not sure. I really think that spending most of the game at the same tier of weapons with no upgrades hurts more than you'd think it would.)

universecreep wrote:
I have no doubt that Amplitude will listen and continue to try to improve the game but my fear is whether they will survive long enough to do it...

Lol but sad truth, I stick be positive by pinpointing I have zero idea about the finances thing. For me the bad clue is even if I find Disharmony very fun, I consider it's a very rushed released. That's a bad sign but not an evidence.

cgboy2003 wrote:
That's exactly how I feel. Only once I have seen Cravers capture my star system instantly and I thought WTF!

Lucky guy, myself saw few isolated planes, not sure I ever saw AA during space combats, but never any quick invade. How the game work, not enough information on opponents, and simultaneous turns, makes less intructive AI play, I saw many game working much better for that.

cgboy2003 wrote:


I think the devs can fix it in no time since the AIs can do it but only can't do it well.

If they fix it, that will be a game changer because players have to be more tactically aware and do more recons.

Because the AIs can do serious damages to the star systems, we have to intercept the invasion as fast as we can.

Therefore, it kind of exposes our main fleets(because we will probably deploy them closer to the enemy)and makes them easily captured by enemy forces.

And we can't leave our borders undefended (we gotta have some armed national guards:twist because AIs can easily do some terrorist attacks to wipe out our star systems.

Well I consider that some systems could be used as sort of neutral area, from a defense point of view guard strictly the frontiers let the choices to opponent. Guard the back of frontiers let counter attack and adapt, it gives you the initiative and sometimes the initiative will be flee to regroup, some other time it will be to crush the enemy before it regroups more.



That said because of exaggerated high movements I still consider important to have blocking points, but it's better if they can be a bit back from frontier.



I'd prefer a more strategic game which only allows jump, one or two, not more. And also that later there isn't the navigating out of the lines, again for a more strategic game. That plus some ability to long range teleport from a system producing the ship to another system, and this would require build some special building in both system, this would make the game more strategic than it is currently.

Gaizokubanou wrote:
cgboy2003 you keep saying how Harmony was for veterans, but the only thing about that faction as of right now is that it's a penalty (no heroes and less early game infrastructure).

I think I should rephrase that. Maybe "not for inexperienced players" would be more precise.



I believe the dev will handle the balance things.



But I said so because some players can win with the Harmony on normal and impossible (I saw two).



And after I played it, I feel it's challenging but there seems to be still some ways to win. And some players on this forum did give some useful tips.



Other problems you mentioned in your earlier posts are not problems for me at all.



If there is any misunderstanding, please let me know.

DesertFoxx wrote:
The vanilla was far from perfect, but the game has improved a lot, mostly due to active community input and Amplitude's willingness to listen to the players.

Some may say a product should be in its most optimal state when it's released, but this is difficult even for most established companies. Even Starcraft was not



Foxx

I have no doubt that Amplitude will listen and continue to try to improve the game but my fear is whether they will survive long enough to do it.



I haven't heard how well Disharmony has sold but I hope it's enough to keep the company going so they can continue to work on this game and the next.

I thought the game was great, except for slew of balance issues. Like Harmony faction--cool concept but man the balance really ran them under a bus and the faction has nothing redeeming about them. cgboy2003 you keep saying how Harmony was for veterans, but the only thing about that faction as of right now is that it's a penalty (no heroes and less early game infrastructure). Might as well as just slap on another difficulty level where the AI gets more bonuses. Or the fleet spam end game (late game infrastructure disproportionately good compared to ship costs).



Only thing I don't get is the card system... it just feels like a straight up rock paper scissor, which is fine for basis of mind games but you never mind game an AI so in single player it just seem so senseless.

Tridus wrote:
What are you basing that on, exactly?



Because no, the endgame consisting of insane fleet spam is not a "wrong strategy", unless the correct strategy is that nobody should ever see the late stage of the game. There not being enough tiers of weapons so you spend most of the game on the same one isn't a strategy issue. The stuff that was broken at Disharmony's release like performance and the ship design mess weren't strategy, they were a bug and a design mistake respectively.

Oh, maybe "wrong strategy" is an inappropriate term to describe that.



I mean that the core of Disharmony should be the new faction, the Harmony, but the Harmony is obviously not for everyone.



So I guess that the devs try to satisfy the experienced players who have already been playing on Endless difficulty and willing to accept the challenge.



I am satisfied but I know that not everyone is. I think the devs should satisfy the majority first like how Automations do.



I don't know how you feel, but Automations are much better for everyone in my opinion, and the Harmony is only for very experienced players.



And I don't think that the tiers of weapons and the ship design have any problems.



After the release, I started playing Endless Space again on Endless difficulty.



The new features of the game work like a charm for me, and I didn't even notice many changes people talked about.



I vaguely realized that something is different.



But as long as we can still win on Endless difficulty(except the Harmony, the holy grail for the true fighters), I didn't pay too much attention to or think about that because it doesn't bother me.



If you are talking about the MP thing, I really hope that the dev can separately balance the MP and the single player like how many other games do.



And it's so confusing to talk about these two totally different things on the same forum.

Tridus wrote:
Like it or not, multiplayer is a minority in this genre. If the game doesn't stand in single player, it's going to do poorly.

I found that you said so, so I guess you are talking about single player.



I really don't think there is any problem in single player, but I do like that the devs try to entertain as many players as they can, for them and for us who want to play more of their works.



10 bucks expansion should be for everyone.



The difficulty of Harmony is wrong and the right thing to do is to have 2 new factions. One for experienced players, one for everyone like Automations. Or only one new faction for everyone.



It's like Set Meal A and Set Meal B, but the devs only offer Set Meal A for veteran players now and it is unable to swallow for others.



And the changes should be made with the care for players who might not take it as a challenge.



Abandoning ordinary players or making ones feel so is not good for business and the future of the game.



And I think the game works with Steam so the devs should have the tools and data to analyze how players are doing so far.



Are they doing well on Endless difficulty? What difficulty are they playing on now? What factions are they playing? They get defeated, give up or thrive?



Bioware did so for Mass Effect 3 and the statistics surely can help the devs and the players.



I hope they can gather that and post it for reference and I think it will be helpful to locate the problems.



But I am not the ones complaining or demanding, and I hate to get misunderstood.

cgboy2003 wrote:
And most of the negative feelings are probably because of the wrong strategy.

What are you basing that on, exactly?



Because no, the endgame consisting of insane fleet spam is not a "wrong strategy", unless the correct strategy is that nobody should ever see the late stage of the game. There not being enough tiers of weapons so you spend most of the game on the same one isn't a strategy issue. The stuff that was broken at Disharmony's release like performance and the ship design mess weren't strategy, they were a bug and a design mistake respectively.

DesertFoxx wrote:
If they introduce another expansion set with campaigns, improved visuals (i.e. invasion), teams, and ladder systems, I will considering purchasing it, given that Disharmony improves some more, although I am already quite satisfied.

That is indeed what everyone who truly supports the devs thinks.



Since the game released, the devs have been doing an amazing job.



Comparing with the games I have quit playing, Endless Space keeps growing and thriving.



In my imagination, maybe someday we can have an expedition to another galaxy with other players as an united galaxy and confront the most threatening enemies like Reapers or Collectors(of course, the devs will have their own ideas about the foes).



But that is only my wildest dream about Endless Space.



(Someone might ask how on the earth the Cravers will join us and cooperate, and the answer is simple, like how they do in Mass Effect 3 or Guild Wars 2, a variety of the faction, like a faction of the Geth which is not aggressive. And the devs can easily make the hostile faction of the original races the enemies, like crazy sophon extremist scientists or purist Harmony)

Correction: The title should be: Disharmony = end of endless space?





Perhaps I'm being a little more cynical than usual since I'm going in for emergency surgery in a few days but I've been concerned by the rather negative feelings/reviews about the expansion.



If Amplitude was a large publisher with big pockets, I'd just shrug this off but I can't keep from thinking that the poor reception the expansion's had will be the death knell for this great little game.



The reason, is I would suspect that amplitude was probably counting on revenue from the expansion and the almost universal cool reception has probably hurt sales a lot. I wonder how much Amplitude can take before they're force to call it a day? As far as I know, they don't have any new game on the horizon to release and get the coffers full again.



I hope my feelings are just the result of me wallowing in my own pity with negative thoughts being the only thing that come to light but I'd hate to see this game's development end.



Any thoughts?

DesertFoxx wrote:
The vanilla was far from perfect, but the game has improved a lot, mostly due to active community input and Amplitude's willingness to listen to the players.

Some may say a product should be in its most optimal state when it's released, but this is difficult even for most established companies. Even Starcraft was not perfect at release and had its own game-breaking balance issues until Blizzard patched it. Take a look at Diablo II. Everyone thinks it has always been perfect, but people forget that DII had a lot of issues as well in the beginning, something DIII players seem to forget. I believe Diablo III is also undergoing improvements due to complaints.



I think Amplitude will constantly improve the game and gain more credibility over time. The rest is up to marketing.

If they introduce another expansion set with campaigns, improved visuals (i.e. invasion), teams, and ladder systems, I will considering purchasing it, given that Disharmony improves some more, although I am already quite satisfied.



Foxx

Good point there Foxx, Amplitude listens a lot to the community, compared to many other games/communities/studios.

The vanilla was far from perfect, but the game has improved a lot, mostly due to active community input and Amplitude's willingness to listen to the players.

Some may say a product should be in its most optimal state when it's released, but this is difficult even for most established companies. Even Starcraft was not perfect at release and had its own game-breaking balance issues until Blizzard patched it. Take a look at Diablo II. Everyone thinks it has always been perfect, but people forget that DII had a lot of issues as well in the beginning, something DIII players seem to forget. I believe Diablo III is also undergoing improvements due to complaints.



I think Amplitude will constantly improve the game and gain more credibility over time. The rest is up to marketing.

If they introduce another expansion set with campaigns, improved visuals (i.e. invasion), teams, and ladder systems, I will considering purchasing it, given that Disharmony improves some more, although I am already quite satisfied.



Foxx

Do you think it would be better if there was less bugs in the game?



I like some of the changes they have made in the latest disharmony beta which does speed the game up. I am using playing the Mac version so the to really annoying bugs are that any battles played in the manual the enemies retreat on the game hangs. I get maybe one battle in ten that game does not hang when the enemy retreats. The other bug is that ES hangs when I select quit to desktop so I have to force quit ES.



I have not really played classic apart from one Mod that I got so I cannot compare the two really. The bugs aside I really enjoy playing Disharmony. Whatever Amplitude do they will never please everyone. I do believe they are better at listening to their community and most do.



DarkMeph

Nook wrote:
I think you are evoking the price strategy for the addon Disharmony.

Price is one factor.



But I think it's majorly because Disharmony is not so appealing to players who have already had problems with Classic.



I think they should focus on the need of the majority first.



I have no problems at all and I think Disharmony Endless difficulty is only as usual(except Harmony..oO').



But I think only if the majority is happy, we can be happy, too....

Nook wrote:
The new features are fun to explore and use but funnily the new AI seems ignore them a lot. Also for sure the AI could get some more adjusting.

That's exactly how I feel. Only once I have seen Cravers capture my star system instantly and I thought WTF!



I guess that the devs handle the human interface first and the AI is still a mess.



And the AI positively can perform the new mechanisms but just not efficiently enough.



It's kind of bad for inexperienced players to watch and learn. The AIs don't do the tricks, who will?



I think the devs can fix it in no time since the AIs can do it but only can't do it well.



If they fix it, that will be a game changer because players have to be more tactically aware and do more recons.



Because the AIs can do serious damages to the star systems, we have to intercept the invasion as fast as we can.



Therefore, it kind of exposes our main fleets(because we will probably deploy them closer to the enemy)and makes them easily captured by enemy forces.



And we can't leave our borders undefended (we gotta have some armed national guards:twist because AIs can easily do some terrorist attacks to wipe out our star systems.



After 911, the U.S. national guards are asked to be fully armed because 2 unarmed F16 interceptors tried to Kamikaze the hijacked plane...you can see how it works and why.



The bottom line is , I can't play Classic anymore, either, when such an intriguing gameplay is out there.

cgboy2003 wrote:


...

I think it's not a big deal, and the devs just need to adjust their strategy in the future.

I think you are evoking the price strategy for the addon Disharmony. Yeah they need hire a baby-sitter as a strategy advisor that will help them to manage better the modern players or com better with them.

The painting isn't dry, but Disharmony is still a lot better just because of the more interesting AI. The new features are fun to explore and use but funnily the new AI seems ignore them a lot. Also for sure the AI could get some more adjusting.



The schism between Endless Space and Disharmony is the second quit a little the design road of the first, minimizing micro management and increasing general strategy approach.



Also it's clear that current state in Disharmony isn't totally clean, not a good integration of the new elements in the interface and games informations, probably some balance that need some adjusting, some bugs added by Disharmony and if last patch already fixed many.



But clearly I can't play anymore Vanilla now.

I heard that the sales are quite good for the first game of an independent producer, right?



Disharmony is only an expansion. And it charges money simply because other earlier expansions are free.



In my opinion, the efforts of the improvements they have made don't deserve just that little.



I am not worried about such a good game which sells well, and only charges extra 10 bucks for what they have been working on.



And most of the negative feelings are probably because of the wrong strategy.



The brand new design is kind of appealing to experienced players who see it as a challenge and enjoy it very much.



But it kind of neglects the need of other players.



I think it's not a big deal, and the devs just need to adjust their strategy in the future.

I hope Amplitude will make it. I really enjoy the way they listen to the community and the games aren't that bad (I haven't made it to endgame on disharmony yet so maybe that's it) but I would hate to see them go underwater. I've heard they went on vacation recently so maybe they wanted to get it out before then.



Good luck on the surgery by the way.

Tridus wrote:
That's not a very good business model considering how much damage releasing a bad product in the first place does to the sales of your next one.

It's worked for Hollywood for decades.

Nikolay_PI wrote:
May be this is modern style business ? Make half-backed product fast and patch, patch and patch it afterward ?

That's not a very good business model considering how much damage releasing a bad product in the first place does to the sales of your next one.



I also hope this isn't the end. At this point I doubt that Disharmony will ever be patched into something I'll actually enjoy because too many design decisions I don't like were made, but none of those problems couldn't be fixed in another expansion if they decided to tackle them. *Will* they decide to tackle them? I have no idea.

Somewhat agree. Classic version was good, but not very good game (one and only one winning way for any race).

But Disharmony completely bad. I am can not find any good new feature. Invasion ? This is rather bad - if you lost first battle you be killed fast, you do not have time for rebuild new fleet. Fighters ? Totally useless, almost all battles wins or losses at Long Range stage. Harmony ? Very weak race. Shrunken tech list ? Hell no! In classic i am can successfully fight with enemy ship (with N level weapon) with my ships (with N-1 or N-2 level weapon) because my superior ship design or economic advantage. Now ship with +1 weapon level can shoot down you in blink of eye.



May be this is modern style business ? Make half-backed product fast and patch, patch and patch it afterward ?