Dementophobic wrote:
Unhappy.



There are plenty of positives to the game, and on some level I really like it but there are so many small things that make it sometimes unbearable to play. Haven't tried Disharmony yet since I'm waiting on the patches but these are my feelings on ES vanilla (likely the same for Disharmony).



Non-gameplay related problems:

i. -10 Crashing and freezing. This is the only game I play where crashing and freezing occurs regularly (at least once per game for at least one person). Luckily it's a 4x turn-based game so it doesn't totally kill it, but it is incredibly annoying and makes playing with strangers very difficult.



ii. -10 Game fails to focus on SP or MP, just does both at a mediocre level.



With regards to singleplayer, the AI is terrible. Increasing difficulty merely increases the amount of cheats they use and penalty you suffer. Honestly if it was done this way, at least give us slider bars to set exactly how much penalty we suffer and the bonuses they get.



With regards to multiplayer, the interface is unspectacular, I'll cut Amplitude a break on this one since they're a small company though.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gameplay related problems:



iii. -25 Terrible control stream lining. No rally points. You must produce ships with 1 click per ship, instead of being able to simply type "20" and allow 20 ships to be made. Fleet merging is annoying to say the least. In system you can't just click drag an improvement to put it at the top of the queue, instead you must drag it upward starting from the bottom of the queue.



iv. -25 Poor/shallow mechanic design in many crucial areas of a 4x game. Diplomacy is a minimal in this game, combat is stale (with a card system there should be MANY, MANY cards to choose from to start), and trade route mechanic is too shallow (there are no options to play around with in trade routes).



v. -10 Poor race design/diversification. Races could have been made much more unique by having race-specific battle/tactic cards. MP could have had much more differentiated races (+30 overall points to spend with more unique faction traits). IMO the idea of custom races should have been kept to single player-only since they're impossible to balance with the original races.



There are positives but I'm sure people already know what's good about the game. Fighters and bombers are cool. We did need a way to completely destroy a system (the troop mechanic was completely unneeded though, we simply needed a way to raze a system and bombers were sufficient).



Fixing the gameplay related issues would already make me say that I'm happy with it.

I hated the troop system at first, but now I like it

Igncom1 wrote:
I don't even do that, I just copy code that is like what I want to do from other parts of the game.

Yes, Igncom, we all know how godly your modding skillz are

It's not that the modding part is that difficult. It is that you have to know what files, where they are, and what changes to make. There is also the necessity to reboot after any trivial change, which is a bit exacerbating.

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
Happy. Like Ail, I'll give an ES style breakdown of my choice.



etc

haha, this made me lol

Zoeper wrote:
haha, this made me lol

And, may I ask, what, specifically, in this ancient post of mine made you laugh out loud?

I wanted to buy the Disharmony expansion but I have put it off because I was waiting for the balance patch. I know the Devs are working on it but boy has it been a long time.



I probably will come back to the game once the patch is out but you never know. A new game may catch my interest and I'll forget about the game.

I do not refuse to play this game, I WANT to play this game, but the simple fact is, I do not enjoy the game anymore. Its jumped the shark. Its gone stupid.



My chief irritant is having to have a chart alongside my play so I can remember just what a destroyer does for whichever race I encounter. Of all the boneheaded dumb ass changes, suddenly hull types mean something different depending on race? Really? REALLY? Then to top it off are the idiot FIDS numbers assigned to planets. Oh, I forgot, races have no uniqueness still. Harmony or whatever, yawn, boring race. Best race in game wasn't even designed by the people who made the game.

Shivetya wrote:
I do not refuse to play this game, I WANT to play this game, but the simple fact is, I do not enjoy the game anymore. Its jumped the shark. Its gone stupid.



My chief irritant is having to have a chart alongside my play so I can remember just what a destroyer does for whichever race I encounter.

Id like a database for this kinda thing.

Of all the boneheaded dumb ass changes, suddenly hull types mean something different depending on race? Really? REALLY?

Its what the community asked for, and personally Id prefer it if ship 'classes' were only about the size more then a bonus.

Then to top it off are the idiot FIDS numbers assigned to planets.

Not sure what you mean by idiotic, as most 4X games have arbitrary numbers assigned to terrain.

Oh, I forgot, races have no uniqueness still.

Other then the unique affinitys, tech and ship bonuses.

Harmony or whatever, yawn, boring race.

Aren't they the Silicoids from MOO?

Best race in game wasn't even designed by the people who made the game.

In terms of gameplay they take a lot of micromanagement skill to pull off, and in terms of lore.....meh I prefer the UE personally.

I love this game and I don't say much on here but i have not put this game down for long since it came out and i really only have minor complaints and i really wouldn't even call them complaints. but the one thing i am worried about is what some others have all ready said, what is the future of this game? i love the free content but i want to before sure that there is going to be continued support for this game such as new BIG expansion and so forth because with a name like endless space i would hope (and ask) that you never end it. i love this game, and i hope that it has much much MUCH MORE in store for its future! I know you guys are excited about the up coming games but please don't forget about the amazing one you already have!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

^^ The free add-on coming for Disharmony is most likely the meant to provide the exact same reassurance that the first 4 did, that ES would be continued to be developed for longer, if not indefinitely.



As it has been sort-of implied, part of the team (at least a game-designer ) will remain working on ES primarily. So no, I am not very worried about the future of ES. I am, however, worried about what they won't do to ES. Both Igncom and I have mentioned on more than one occasion that ES could capitalize on adding in more civilian depth to the game. Also, the entire community wants the game to be more immerse.



So new content is so-so ('cause it brings on bugs) but improved content is best.

I'm loving the game. You may call me a fanatic but I do acknowledge the multiple problems that Disharmony has. However, in my eyes they are being outweighed quite severely by all the good things I can say about ES & the add-on.

It's just my opinion and I'm not willing to elaborate on it, as I've done it too many times already and I'm quite tired of it. No offense

DMT wrote:
I hated the troop system at first, but now I like it

Yeah, because you have apparently mastered the art of combining drop troops with non-cosmic-string drive sometime before our last multiplayer game

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
Yeah, because you have apparently mastered the art of combining drop troops with non-cosmic-string drive sometime before our last multiplayer game

In my last game with him, it backfired a bit... I still need that innocent angel smiley.

Nosferatiel wrote:
In my last game with him, it backfired a bit... I still need that innocent angel smiley.

Blasphemy

DMT wrote:
Blasphemy

I'm a regular blasphemer out of conviction and the surprise when I managed to get the sci victory, despite you attacking my then nonexistent defenses with a devious surprise attack, by simply throwing 4 dreadnaughts per system at you per turn, afterwards, that was priceless!

Unhappy. Near "strike".



Which doesn't mean I don't LIKE the game, I've spent a lot of time with it.



I'm unhappy because it seems like it's not that far away from "awesome" but it it crippled by odd imbalances in its combat system and awkwardness in its user interface.



Yes, moving something to the front of the queue should be MUCH easier.



Rally points would be a plus, but I can live without them.



Having Melee Kinetics be the universal killer is tragic.



Not having a tool to track known uncolonized systems is unforgivable. MOO2 had this HOW many years ago?



Not having a hotseat mode that would allow both genuine hotseat games and serve as combat simulators for a single player is a puzzling omission.



Templated development plans for systems would avoid irritating micro-management.



Richer spying capabilities would be a huge plus.



Really, this game has the potential -- ESPECIALLY in multiplayer mode, where MOO2 is weak at least where connectivity goes (you can't get all your friends to hook up a Novell networking emulator) -- to actually move past MOO2 as the best space 4X game, with its richly imagined races and elaborate story background. Realizing it still hasn't managed to do that, despite having the advantage of having been able to enjoy MOO2 and having far more advanced tools and processing capabilities is a bummer.

Ail wrote:
Well, at first I thought that picking "Unhappy" would be a little bit harsh and express that I don't really like the game.



-New invasion mechanics -10: I liked how simple it was in Vanilla and am somewhat annoyed by the addition of a new game-mechanic I don't remeber anyone asking for.



-Stupid AI-behavior -10: Putting Heros on Scouts and flying them into enemy-systems or sending in undefended Invasion-ships over and over again, until they are all destroyed.



-Overcomplicated, almost uncomparable and artificially diverse weapons -10: Number of projectiles*damage*number of salvos*range-modifier*hit-chance/tonnage-usage... I want to see the friggin' avarage damage per tonnage so I can actually compare the weapons. I don't want to sit down with a calculator to find out: "Oh, look, Melee-Kinetics in avarage are way superior to everything else... or are they?"



-Reduced weapon-level-progression -10: Vanilla had 30, Disharmony has 9. Sure there's still other fields to progress in but I liked it much more when you could research weapons because you wanted better weapons and not get countless filler techs while having the next better weapon so far away that you won't make it there in the current war. 90% of the game is now played on Tier-2-weapons/defenses. Also weapons and defenses on the exact same techs? I think that's not a good idea either.



-Bugs -10: Like building Contamination-Barriers before colonizing all planets in a system virtually "destroys" the uncolonized planets by removing all Dust without giving the Food and Science that was promised.



-Stupid-GUI-Decisions -10: When you click a stack of fleets on galaxy-view you get a fleet-list that contains a whoopin' 4 items and depending on how many fleets there are a very tiny scroll-bar. All the while there's like 5 or 6 times the amount of space of the fleet-list above it. Or even worse: In manual combat you have a list of your ships with their health-bars. It holds 5 of them and has a very tiny scrollbar. How can one even think that this would make any sense? I want to see all of the health-bars at, so I actually can see what's going on! There still is a hide button for those who want to watch the combat-animation.

And yes, there is more than enough, almost endless space for the addition of the other ships.

Same goes for the system view, that also can only contain 4 items. Moving a new item to the top of the list when you have like 10 small ships queued is a total pain in the ass because you can only move it 3 places up, scroll, move it 3 places up again, scroll again, ...



-Fleet merging/launching -10: As long as the amount of ships selected is smaller than one fleet's maximum capacity everything is fine. But what happens when it exceeds it? The friggin' merge and launch buttons get greyed out and your only way to do it now is to manually pick every single ship for the fleet and then merge. This really is annoying! Why can't it just merge/launch several fleets at once? I guess the code is there and it even can take care of different ship types because the AI must somehow merge it's fleets too, right? It's just not accessible to the player!



So if this list of issues would be worked, my approval for the game could drastically improve. ^^

New invasion mechanics --- I might agree with this one... if I understood them.

Stupid AI-behavior --- I do that! Now I have to explain to my family that I am just a stupid AI. I thought I was just a promotion junkie.

Overcomplicated, almost uncomparable and artificially diverse weapons -10 --- hang on... are we playing the same game? They seem to be a nice rock paper scissors paradigm, which when coupled with the card system, gives context to the cards you want to pick and thus add 'risk' when you pick away from preference. And I wholeheartedly disagree with the 'I want a one gun kills all' calculation that reduces to a build one gun ignore the rest solution. Of course, I will grant you that this, I have no idea how any gun works paradigm results in a always have them all ... just in case... paradigm that essentially boils down to the same thing.

Reduced weapon-level-progression --- I dislike games where I am upgrading weapons systems every three turns so the reduction in the number of 'redesign the entire fleet sessions' this change implies gets my applause.



I am just two weeks in, so I haven't gotten to the 'Once I understand everything the game has to offer is it still worth playing phase'. But just going from UE to Sophon has felt very different as does my path through conflicts from game to game. Which puts this Iteration ahead of most of the MOO clones I have tried over the decades. It definitely has a lot of 'does this really matter?' feel to a lot of aspects in the game, but I do feel in control of my empire's outcome rather than the other way around (ahem MOOIII... ahem)

The game needed big expansion packs like you get in CIV5,etc.Small addon packs that give a wonder or a few heroes or Disharmony which seemed rushed out with a small development time is disappointing.



Looks like we will have to wait for ES2 before we get much needed improvements.

Ashbery76 wrote:




Looks like we will have to wait for ES2 before we get much needed improvements.

If so, that wait would probably be a very long time (as far as game development time goes)



Explanation



The only real justifiable time to make a sequel that is essentially the same game as its predecessor is when coding and/or graphics become obselete. At that point the game is overhauled and the new game releaseed.



However, in my eyes, games like Civ simply repackage the same game, with some improvements (such as graphics) and require us to buy it again, when their improvements did not require and overhaul of the games framework. This essentially gouges the player for money.



Since I believe amplitude respects its customers, I believe that they would only release an ES2 when the changes were groundbreaking. Judging by the fact that the coding and graphics are not all that likely to become outdated in the near future, this would probably be a while. This is still not the best option, since as you said, the game needs a little help, and it would be better to have that help sooner rather than later.



So I prefer not to resign myself to wait for ES2 and rather hope the devs develop another expansion, an expansion that gives the game the help it needs.



Hopefully they consult the community on ES's future using this new G2G thing they're working on, and avoid allot of indecison.

Content.



I feel like I may have just gotten bored of the game, personally.

I might wait for something to draw me back in before playing again as ES is good....a little flawed but overall good, but defiantly not exceptional right now. There is so much potencial for ES to do many things from a larger macro space game where systems could be further clustered up and the maps made even larger, to a more detailed mechanic for the players civilian populations, politics and religion and internal strife.



Really enhance the games strategic element to make the game feel more like an actual colonised galaxy with events happening people managing and history being generated as the player responds to create empires that even from the same faction might end up wildly different in function like religious based trading empires that can influence the costs and economy of other players to junta totalitarian scientific organisations that seek to steal their research points by invading enemy systems and trading with pirates.



All dependant on how a player caters to their populations and how such actions (Like the use of dreadnoughts) or (The creation of economic treaties) change how the player generates fids in new interesting ways they have to manage.





Just so much potential for a truly unique 4X game that would really add to this bare bones 4X game.



That is how Id like to see ES grow, into a proper 4X game where you really do build empires and not just 'play' empires.

Well, at first I thought that picking "Unhappy" would be a little bit harsh and express that I don't really like the game.

But in my case that's not the case.

I really like the game but there's all those small annoyances that sum up to a point where the fun suffers.



Also it doesn't mean that there is a giant gap between unhappy, content and happy.



Of course I'm willing to give the exact reasons that reduce my "Approval" of the game:



-New invasion mechanics -10: I liked how simple it was in Vanilla and am somewhat annoyed by the addition of a new game-mechanic I don't remeber anyone asking for.



-Stupid AI-behavior -10: Putting Heros on Scouts and flying them into enemy-systems or sending in undefended Invasion-ships over and over again, until they are all destroyed.



-Overcomplicated, almost uncomparable and artificially diverse weapons -10: Number of projectiles*damage*number of salvos*range-modifier*hit-chance/tonnage-usage... I want to see the friggin' avarage damage per tonnage so I can actually compare the weapons. I don't want to sit down with a calculator to find out: "Oh, look, Melee-Kinetics in avarage are way superior to everything else... or are they?"



-Reduced weapon-level-progression -10: Vanilla had 30, Disharmony has 9. Sure there's still other fields to progress in but I liked it much more when you could research weapons because you wanted better weapons and not get countless filler techs while having the next better weapon so far away that you won't make it there in the current war. 90% of the game is now played on Tier-2-weapons/defenses. Also weapons and defenses on the exact same techs? I think that's not a good idea either.



-Bugs -10: Like building Contamination-Barriers before colonizing all planets in a system virtually "destroys" the uncolonized planets by removing all Dust without giving the Food and Science that was promised.



-Stupid-GUI-Decisions -10: When you click a stack of fleets on galaxy-view you get a fleet-list that contains a whoopin' 4 items and depending on how many fleets there are a very tiny scroll-bar. All the while there's like 5 or 6 times the amount of space of the fleet-list above it. Or even worse: In manual combat you have a list of your ships with their health-bars. It holds 5 of them and has a very tiny scrollbar. How can one even think that this would make any sense? I want to see all of the health-bars at, so I actually can see what's going on! There still is a hide button for those who want to watch the combat-animation.

And yes, there is more than enough, almost endless space for the addition of the other ships.

Same goes for the system view, that also can only contain 4 items. Moving a new item to the top of the list when you have like 10 small ships queued is a total pain in the ass because you can only move it 3 places up, scroll, move it 3 places up again, scroll again, ...



-Fleet merging/launching -10: As long as the amount of ships selected is smaller than one fleet's maximum capacity everything is fine. But what happens when it exceeds it? The friggin' merge and launch buttons get greyed out and your only way to do it now is to manually pick every single ship for the fleet and then merge. This really is annoying! Why can't it just merge/launch several fleets at once? I guess the code is there and it even can take care of different ship types because the AI must somehow merge it's fleets too, right? It's just not accessible to the player!



So if this list of issues would be worked, my approval for the game could drastically improve. ^^

I am content. But I pu the game down waiting on some fixes. I'll load it up again sometime this winter.

Happy. Like Ail, I'll give an ES style breakdown of my choice.



-15 due to bugs

-10 due to lifeless faction game-play

-10 due to lifeless combat

-5 due to no clarification on the future of ES



+15 due to new invasion mechanics (I asked for them, at least)

+80 due to empire (I think is headed in the right direction)

+10 due to Fighters and Bombers

+10 due to improvements (I think they are allot more balanced)

Unhappy.



There are plenty of positives to the game, and on some level I really like it but there are so many small things that make it sometimes unbearable to play. Haven't tried Disharmony yet since I'm waiting on the patches but these are my feelings on ES vanilla (likely the same for Disharmony).



Non-gameplay related problems:

i. -10 Crashing and freezing. This is the only game I play where crashing and freezing occurs regularly (at least once per game for at least one person). Luckily it's a 4x turn-based game so it doesn't totally kill it, but it is incredibly annoying and makes playing with strangers very difficult.



ii. -10 Game fails to focus on SP or MP, just does both at a mediocre level.



With regards to singleplayer, the AI is terrible. Increasing difficulty merely increases the amount of cheats they use and penalty you suffer. Honestly if it was done this way, at least give us slider bars to set exactly how much penalty we suffer and the bonuses they get.



With regards to multiplayer, the interface is unspectacular, I'll cut Amplitude a break on this one since they're a small company though.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gameplay related problems:



iii. -25 Terrible control stream lining. No rally points. You must produce ships with 1 click per ship, instead of being able to simply type "20" and allow 20 ships to be made. Fleet merging is annoying to say the least. In system you can't just click drag an improvement to put it at the top of the queue, instead you must drag it upward starting from the bottom of the queue.



iv. -25 Poor/shallow mechanic design in many crucial areas of a 4x game. Diplomacy is a minimal in this game, combat is stale (with a card system there should be MANY, MANY cards to choose from to start), and trade route mechanic is too shallow (there are no options to play around with in trade routes).



v. -10 Poor race design/diversification. Races could have been made much more unique by having race-specific battle/tactic cards. MP could have had much more differentiated races (+30 overall points to spend with more unique faction traits). IMO the idea of custom races should have been kept to single player-only since they're impossible to balance with the original races.



There are positives but I'm sure people already know what's good about the game. Fighters and bombers are cool. We did need a way to completely destroy a system (the troop mechanic was completely unneeded though, we simply needed a way to raze a system and bombers were sufficient).



Fixing the gameplay related issues would already make me say that I'm happy with it.

Content

No rally points

That gripe may have to be removed soon.

"In system you can't just click drag an improvement to put it at the top of the queue, instead you must drag it upward starting from the bottom of the queue.

Sure can't argue about that one, drives me nuts when I have large queues.

Well, what I really want to know is what is next for ES? Another expansion? SOme more balance patches? Any future content planned?

You guys pretty said everything I want to say. The game is fun, it keeps me coming back (especially coming up new ways to mod it though that's probably not what most other people find fun), but there are so many little things that gets in the way of enjoyment. From the list of already posted issues, I find the non-intuitive combat system and the bad AI to be the biggest ones. I'll also throw in my own pet peeves to the list:



* Semi-turn-based strategic action, I mean really, why do players have to scramble with fleet/hero placement during their turn in a "mostly" turn-based game? Makes no sense.



* Government, would have been nice to have, not the biggest deal to do without, but isn't different forms of government an obvious way to distinguish the different races?



* Unnecessary wait time, 5 sec between clicking the button to start a fight and actually starting the fight, doesn't sound like a lot? Well it really adds up when you go through 10+ fight per turn, really drags the game down.



* Relatively poor modding support, not everyone is interested in this, but many games now-a-days gain longevity from having excellent modding community. And this community can only build up if the devs themselves are willing to invest time to teach players to use their system. ES definitely has one of the most flexible modding system out there but also one of the poorest documented system. Devs are generally helpful when asked in private but rarely engages the modder in open forum. There's so much potential there, yet it is largely untapped.

^^ I have to disagree with you on the modding thing (not your main point on modding) in that I think most people are interested and do mod ES. In fact, I don't think there is any aspect of the game I haven't modded. I just never release mods because I never do anything big, just a few touch-ups.



So I think modding is actually in most everyone's best interest. And even to the relatively few people I know who don't mod on some level or another, support for moders means a better game... So everyone is interested.

Better poll question: What option matches your feelings best?



Seems like a lot of people are dissatisfied with the state of balance of disharmony. And I really like this game, but it seems something is wrong based on all the criticism and balance threads. I want to know where the community lies in this situation. Is it really a major problem, or just a vocal few? The poll will tell. If we want to get the devs attention, we need a lot of votes. Perhaps a goal of 200 total votes would be a start? This is really important for the success of ES, so vote!



Please, this is just an evaluation of how people feel, leave the disharmony discussions and arguments to their own threads.

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
So I think modding is actually in most everyone's best interest. And even to the relatively few people I know who don't mod on some level or another, support for moders means a better game... So everyone is interested.

There is so much to mod already, I don't understand?



Its really easy.

Igncom1 wrote:
There is so much to mod already, I don't understand?



Its really easy.

This! The mods make it better for the personal desires.



I guess it's fine for me atm - i don't play much, therefore the state of the game is OK for me.

Igncom1 wrote:
There is so much to mod already,

Pretty much anything except copyrighted material... Which would present a bigger challenge, like you pointed out, punching lines into an XML is pretty simple.

I don't even do that, I just copy code that is like what I want to do from other parts of the game.

I'm moderately unhappy with disharmony overall right now, mostly because the harmony are so cool, and yet I feel bad for playing them. I really like them (favorite race atm), and I try to do good with them, but i can only seem to compete with hard level AI without absolutely getting curbstomped. Then again if I get a craver/hissho early i often still end up getting smacked before i get my economy going.



Additionally i'd say that the addition of the new combat mechanics is nice, but I wasn't able to figure out what anything meant for the longest time (especially hull weakness) since that information is only really available in patch notes hosted here on the forum, instead of a terminology reference somewhere in the game.



Others have said points that I agree with as well, so I won't parrot them.



Hope they fix some things soon, or at least implement the proposed harmony changes I saw a couple weeks ago in the harmony thread. Would make my life against my friends somewhat easier.



Also if I had a genie I would like to wish for custom faction-specific events (such as harmony having replacement events for things that only give dust or hero xp options).

I do not have the disharmony add on because it sounds like all it does is add to the war aspect of the game, of which I dislike the most. I like colonizing the planets, terraforming them, creating trade routes and diplomacy. I'm not into the war aspect of this game, but I am content to play the game without the DLC.

Basically haven't played at all since the initial release. I was really unhappy with changes like the massive reduction to weapon progression and the general screwiness of all the combat mechanics. Not much has changed on that front.



Since it seems like Amplitude has moved on to new games I'm not sure anything else is going to be done with ES at this point. Disharmony was a rushed release to cash in, sadly.