reynanuy wrote:
That's the point, he is a new player so he isn't supposed to know that; but the game punishes him for not knowing = bad game design. This happened to me, even when I was fully aware of the feature(only because I read the manual before playing) and realized that with that turned off, it was almost impossible to play the game; there is simple too much stuff happening at the same time. The game ends up being like a movie, the interaction is limited and you end up feeling not the same amount of accomplishment as you should with an 4x game. At least that was my brief(couldn't play more than a few hours) experience with the game. I did got all expansions, so I did try the "whole" experience let's say.

I suppose i'm a different kind of gamer, I like to figure out how stuff works it kinda gives me reason to play just learning the game. Have you ever tried dwarf fortress? it's a pain in the ass to play and learn, but it's totally worth it even with its so called "bad game design". it's the same in roguelikes you're supposed to be punished for not knowing stuff there.



I can agree that distant worlds feels abit like a movie but it fills an interesting niche in my opinion which alot of people seem to enjoy(skulked around their forums for abit). So all in all defi wouldn't call it a bad game, just a niche one.

There are any number of lessons that can be learned from past failures:



1. A strategic map of your empire should be clean and manageable. I realize that some people like the idea of having a 10,000 star strategic map arranged in 3-D globular clusters, but this is the quickest way to turn people off. I always hated the SOTS strategic map. As one game reviewer said, it felt like someone just threw confetti on your screen.



2. Combat shouldn't be an exercise in hurry up and wait. Why do I have to spend two minutes closing to engage the enemy and then playing a game of tag while he runs away from me? There's no sense in that sort of thing.



3. AI needs to know when to press on and when to quit. I've played so many games where the AI just flatly refuses to surrender even when their empire has been lost and their homeworld has a doomsday fleet at their door. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've successfully convinced an AI player to enter into a vassal like relationship when they are clearly about ready to lose the game. Even peace treaties are sometimes difficult to acquire in some games.



4. Fleet sizes should be manageable - some games encourage the massive and endless spamming of ships. There's no attachment to vessels being mass-produced at a factory with throw-away crews. Not to say that a certain faction like an insectoid race wouldn't operate like that, but I don't think it makes sense for every faction to function that way.





Just a few thoughts...

Naproxia wrote:
Release it early like Sword of the stars 2

HE HE HE, true.



Oh, please don't make Steam the only option for dll and updating the game. It means a lot to some that we are not Steam dependant.

Ashbery76 wrote:
Is to critic a game you have no idea how to play.

I assume you are referring to the OP's criticism of Distant Worlds?

What not to do

Is to critic a game you have no idea how to play.

I have played both Distant Worlds and MoO3, and I liked MoO3 better. Looking back, however, I see that both game suffer from the same flaw: As the player, you just set broad guidelines and then watch the game pretty much play itself. Of course, in MoO2, you went through the same colony build order every time you colonized a new planet, so that was annoying, too. But it always felt like you at least played the game instead of waiting around until one of the choices you could make as the player popped up and then taking it.

In Steel Panthers (yeah. I'm THAT old) you have a very complicate computation for suppression points. You don't need to know the exact computation because it's so brilliantly crafted that you just need to know that every men that was under fire will get some suppression, that running in the wild will get you more, etc. Simple logic is good, simplistic isn't.

At least understandable and logically explainable

VieuxChat wrote:
I second strongly that point. Every computations (or at least most of it) should easily be accessible (tool-tips for instance)

Harwich wrote:


And what's the first thing I'm going to do as a turn-based strategy fan? I'm going to try to figure out how those starting values are derived. Why is my production 2357? Why is my population growth rate 7.2%? This is where my smile started to fade. The numbers seemed arbitrary and I could not find any resource that showed me exactly where they came from. They changed from turn to turn, but how? Why?



Well, without an understanding of how my decisions affect outcomes, how am I expected to make intelligent decisions? The MOO 3 developers had stated that they wanted to remove micromanagement from their game. That's fine, I suppose, but don't show me a bunch of extremely specific numbers I'm not allowed to fathom! it will just drive me nuts.

I second strongly that point. Every computations (or at least most of it) should easily be accessible (tool-tips for instance)

Deyja wrote:
I suppose i'm a different kind of gamer, I like to figure out how stuff works it kinda gives me reason to play just learning the game. Have you ever tried dwarf fortress? it's a pain in the ass to play and learn, but it's totally worth it even with its so called "bad game design". it's the same in roguelikes you're supposed to be punished for not knowing stuff there.



I can agree that distant worlds feels abit like a movie but it fills an interesting niche in my opinion which alot of people seem to enjoy(skulked around their forums for abit). So all in all defi wouldn't call it a bad game, just a niche one.

Damn, I have heard like hundreds of times about that game(Dwarf Fortress); but have never played it. I need to try it to see what the fuss is all about, you are not the first to suggest it to me. I suspect is not really my kind of game, but after so much "hype"; I just gotta do it.

Sorry for being Offtopic OP...



as for the topic... please don't do what cerberus did with sots 2... it literally broke my heart, i was sooo excited about that game and loving sots 1+ expansions i was expecting something awesome..

Good topic idea !

I realize it's rather late in the development process for Endless Space, but I wanted to share a couple of observations.



I saw a few threads on the forum asking people to share their favorite 4X game, or the best parts of the games they've played.



How about we talk about the parts of past games that have really disappointed us? With specifics on what and why, so that Endless Space can avoid the same mistakes.



I'll start!



1) MOO 3 (of course)



I remember launching the game for the first time, being completely excited. I began to check out the interface, to check out my starting planet, my home system. I saw lots of interesting numbers- various empire resources like tech and money and production and population. Everything I expected. And what's the first thing I'm going to do as a turn-based strategy fan? I'm going to try to figure out how those starting values are derived. Why is my production 2357? Why is my population growth rate 7.2%? This is where my smile started to fade. The numbers seemed arbitrary and I could not find any resource that showed me exactly where they came from. They changed from turn to turn, but how? Why?



Well, without an understanding of how my decisions affect outcomes, how am I expected to make intelligent decisions? The MOO 3 developers had stated that they wanted to remove micromanagement from their game. That's fine, I suppose, but don't show me a bunch of extremely specific numbers I'm not allowed to fathom! it will just drive me nuts.



2) Distant Worlds



A much more recent offering, in a time when not many games like this are released. I sat down to try to play it, and realized quickly that you don't do a lot of commanding your ships, which seems odd to me. They seem to go off and do their own thing. And there are so many of them! So many little triangles floating around. In my opinion one should start with order before you get to the chaos.



I could not get a handle on the game, truthfully. But the thing that nailed it shut for me, after which I just couldn't muster up the will to give it another shot, was this: When I started a brand new game, I somehow had another colony in another star system! Well, way to just rob me of any feeling of accomplishment, I guess. I always felt that that first extra-solar colony was a big deal. It was almost like I took over a game already in progress. Ugh.



Anyone else have stories to share?

One thing I feel fairly strongly about is that expansion (especially expansion through warfare) should not be the only viable path to take. Don't get me wrong, warfare and conquest are and should be a big part of a space 4X, but it's also best to give the player(s) other options as well for winning than becoming a massive juggernaut grinding down all opposition through sheer overwhelming numbers. For one thing, that sort of mechanic tends to produce a cycle of boom or bust. Start doing well, and you'll be guaranteed victory because compound interest has your rate of growth only increase as you go on. By contrast, it's not if not happening to luck out in terms of planets near to your homeworld results in the AI players gaining an insurmountable head start. In general, it's very important that there is no single optimal way to play the game. Not only does that drastically reduce replay value it also makes gameplay a no-brainer "press button to win" grind, which is boring.

Dume it down to the level of d3

Deyja wrote:
Just want to note on your distant worlds experiance, many things are automated at the start which you can turn off and on and so on, so don't bash something you haven't fully explored.

That's the point, he is a new player so he isn't supposed to know that; but the game punishes him for not knowing = bad game design. This happened to me, even when I was fully aware of the feature(only because I read the manual before playing) and realized that with that turned off, it was almost impossible to play the game; there is simple too much stuff happening at the same time. The game ends up being like a movie, the interaction is limited and you end up feeling not the same amount of accomplishment as you should with an 4x game. At least that was my brief(couldn't play more than a few hours) experience with the game. I did got all expansions, so I did try the "whole" experience let's say.

Overhype the game.



Advertising the game is good.

Advertising the good things about the game is good.

Creating a bit of hype is good.

....but too much hype is a bad, bad thing. Don't do it.



Too much hype equals high expectations, unrealistically high expectations. When a game is released, it may very well be a good game in an objective view (Whatever constitutes an objective view). But if the players playing the game have a very high expectation of the game, they'll judge the game based on their hyped expectations. Grand disappointment ensues, and that would be bad.

not run a stress test that shuts down after 30 minuts

Harwich wrote:
I realize it's rather late in the development process for Endless Space, but I wanted to share a couple of observations.



I saw a few threads on the forum asking people to share their favorite 4X game, or the best parts of the games they've played.



How about we talk about the parts of past games that have really disappointed us? With specifics on what and why, so that Endless Space can avoid the same mistakes.



I'll start!



1) MOO 3 (of course)



I remember launching the game for the first time, being completely excited. I began to check out the interface, to check out my starting planet, my home system. I saw lots of interesting numbers- various empire resources like tech and money and production and population. Everything I expected. And what's the first thing I'm going to do as a turn-based strategy fan? I'm going to try to figure out how those starting values are derived. Why is my production 2357? Why is my population growth rate 7.2%? This is where my smile started to fade. The numbers seemed arbitrary and I could not find any resource that showed me exactly where they came from. They changed from turn to turn, but how? Why?



Well, without an understanding of how my decisions affect outcomes, how am I expected to make intelligent decisions? The MOO 3 developers had stated that they wanted to remove micromanagement from their game. That's fine, I suppose, but don't show me a bunch of extremely specific numbers I'm not allowed to fathom! it will just drive me nuts.



2) Distant Worlds



A much more recent offering, in a time when not many games like this are released. I sat down to try to play it, and realized quickly that you don't do a lot of commanding your ships, which seems odd to me. They seem to go off and do their own thing. And there are so many of them! So many little triangles floating around. In my opinion one should start with order before you get to the chaos.



I could not get a handle on the game, truthfully. But the thing that nailed it shut for me, after which I just couldn't muster up the will to give it another shot, was this: When I started a brand new game, I somehow had another colony in another star system! Well, way to just rob me of any feeling of accomplishment, I guess. I always felt that that first extra-solar colony was a big deal. It was almost like I took over a game already in progress. Ugh.



Anyone else have stories to share?

Just want to note on your distant worlds experiance, many things are automated at the start which you can turn off and on and so on, so don't bash something you haven't fully explored.

Release it early like Sword of the stars 2

I always disliked it when games would require you to need multiple clicks to access something you obviously need to use regularly. If there's a mechanic on any game that players need to use likely multiple times in 1 hour of play. don't make us have to do 3 clicks to get there each time :S. unless there's a specifically stated shortcut key or something that you don;t have to discover by accident or searching the entire controls/asking on a forum.



Another thing i always hated is when functions was "hidden" from the players. I don't like playing a game for months. only to eventually read on a forum later about a function that was never shown to me or listed anywhere, and that was only discovered by people randomly pressing buttons :-/

One really big thing. Dont do colonization like Space Empires... one colony type each and every type of planet... thus one shipmodel for each and every type of planet.... Why not just make a model that grows more accustomed to each and every type you discover or just terraforming-module... I mean spacetravel is invented so hostile environments should be the least of the problems.



I really like this topic too.

Topic sounds interesting - what devs must do and what they hadn't?

I think, on this stage of development it's too late radically change concepts and basics of game.

My only one request to devs is to make a big, detailed manual. Or in better case in-game tutorial with several stages. Most people didn't understand strategy 4x games and drop it away.

And one more thing. Please make normal demo as soon as possible, because I stop to trust devs long ago and don't want buy an unknown thing.