Would love to zoom in on those inticing planets to see all the buildings I have built and mega tech cities !! Would be immense!



Also would be sad to see them go if I lost the battle :P But nice to gain them if I win

This has been suggested many times, and I think the dev team is taking it seriously! It might actually happen. I know I'm hoping it does.



You should probably lurk around the Design Discussion forum more, that's the usual place for suggestions.

It would be an immense waste of the design teams time and resources that doesn't impact or address known gameplay issue. I seriously hope they are not considering this, why do all of you people want the nice clean interface cluttered up with crap when the devs should be focused on resolving balance issues.

Thomas.Trainor wrote:
It would be an immense waste of the design teams time and resources that doesn't impact or address known gameplay issue. I seriously hope they are not considering this, why do all of you people want the nice clean interface cluttered up with crap when the devs should be focused on resolving balance issues.

Whoa, do you hate flavor or something? 'Immense waste' is pretty strong words, and calling the idea 'crap' is even stronger. I personally happen to love the narrative... and just a little bit of political power fantasy! I play the game to watch my economy gradually climb, soaring over everyone else's on the strength of good, development-focused policy. So for me watching the planets develop over time is in fact a gameplay issue. The game already caters to this a little bit, so I'm happy when I see suggestions to make it more amenable to my particular buildery pleasures.

Platescale, I once again find you apply your preconceptions about what words mean to what they should mean to everyone. Stop it, it makes you infuriating to people who are actually educated about the things you talk about. It has nothing to do with narrative and you can do what you are describing without seeing that with imagination. It is not a gameplay issue unless it impacts the mechanics or your ability to use the mechanics, what you are describing is purely an immersion issue.

While there may indeed be more important issues such as balancing to be tweaked, it doesn't mean that small things such as being able to zoom in on cities and landscapes on the worlds that are part of your empire aren't also important. The dev team will know about game functionality issues so why not spend a little time making suggestions for improving the "feel" of the game - and in this regard small things can make a huge difference! So I agree, zooming in would be sweet!

Thomas, I don't know who you are. If we've spoken before this point, I've forgotten and I'm sorry. If we haven't, color me very creeped out, because random internet strangers shouldn't be making sweeping assertions about me. Telling me that I'm "infuriating" is even creepy if I do know you. We haven't possible spoken long enough for that feeling to be legitimate. I'm not going to claim that the internet isn't "real social encounters" and that nobody should ever be angry about anything, but there's no sense getting infuriated by internet acquaintances you've barely spoken with. I don't do it and neither should you. It doesn't enhance rational discourse.



Also, you're making the assertion that immersion isn't a gameplay issue.



Immersion is a gameplay issue. There are games that function on almost no mechanics other than their immersiveness. They are 'real games'. Indeed, there's very little point arguing about what a 'real game' is. The important part is whether people enjoy it. I put a high priority on whether something is thought-provoking or not. That's part of how I enjoy games. You want a game with good immersion but terrible mechanics? Try Outpost. Broken as hell, but I'm a big fan because it has good theming.



An even better example would be the card game Race for the Galaxy. Race for the Galaxy is not broken as hell. It's actually quite balanced. It's strongly themed. Study the cards. Think about how they look and how each planet and development would fit into a society with the other cards you've seen. This produces excellent strategies (and a few red herrings). Cohesive boards that make you nod and think 'yeah, I can imagine how that faction operates' tend to win games against boards which make you do a double-take and go 'huh?'. Even using your restrictive definition of gameplay, the immersion directly affects the gameplay mechanics. Denigrating immersion categorically is demonstrably incorrect.



Note also that I enjoy my builder strategy with imagination right now. That's the way it works presently because this feature isn't present. If the feature were present, I'd still do it largely with imagination. I'd just have a chance to engage more with the thoughts of others in the process. Done right, it leads to a richer experience. Done wrong, I can just shrug and think of things the way I prefer to.

@platescale: I think Thomas is saying, albeit bluntly, that this sort of suggestion should be left until post-release since it is purely an aesthetic perspective rather than a gameplay tweak or fix. In that respect I agree with him, although it would be nice to see buildings on planets and being able to zoom in, I would rather the dev team concentrate on key issues to the game (such as tweaking the battle system, improving diplomacy etc) before release and fix aesthetical issues such as this after release should they be interested.

Thank you for being more tactful about it. I understand your point now, but we're still in alpha for a little while longer. This is the time for features. Features that aren't being implemented yet often have prework to be done to make sure the design is extensible later. This is the last good opportunity to do that. I'm not saying 'do it now'. I'm more saying 'pay attention to it now so it's possible later'. Once the game moves to beta, the focus will be heavy on balancing.



http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/Progress



Note that Art is in Alpha stage, and most of it has been done. By contrast, Tuning is in Beta stage, and is only 10% done.

Platescale wrote:
Try Outpost. Broken as hell, but I'm a big fan because it has good theming.

Wow, it's AWESOME to see that I am not the only one in the universe that is a big fan of Outpost despite it's humongous failure because of it's immersion.

Thomas.Trainor wrote:
Platescale, I once again find you apply your preconceptions about what words mean to what they should mean to everyone. Stop it, it makes you infuriating to people who are actually educated about the things you talk about. It has nothing to do with narrative and you can do what you are describing without seeing that with imagination. It is not a gameplay issue unless it impacts the mechanics or your ability to use the mechanics, what you are describing is purely an immersion issue.

Well in theory words should mean largely the same thing to different people... It's how we communicate. Describing things as being an "Immense Waste", calling ideas "crap" and saying that someone is "infuriating" others is using very strong, aggressive language designed to shout down a debate or otherwise bully your way into being right.



Tell me, which sentence is more likely to get a positive response from the person you are talking to? What you wrote: "It would be an immense waste of the design teams time and resources that doesn't impact or address known gameplay issue." compared to "I think it would be a waste of development time to focus their energy on something that doesn't impact or address known gameplay issues."



For a second example: "why do all of you people want the nice clean interface cluttered up with crap when the devs should be focused on resolving balance issues." as compared to "I think that the devs should be focusing on smoothing out the game balance issues rather than adding things to the interface, which if poorly implemented would only serve to clutter it up."

I don't get why the interface would be cluttered up by a planet zoom. Though it would be a lot more work, then the current simple tab that allow you to see the improvement on your planet. The see planet side, as a game function would be a good way to visually see what improvement you have on your planet. But, it wouldn't really clutter the interface if you don't zoom on the planet.



I did like that in Master of Orion 2, it added immersion. But no it's not really essential for the game to have that, or to be playable. It could add flavor for invasion, not sure what they plan for that.. because in the Alpha it's pretty hard to get feed back from invasion.. beside just wait it out until the planet switch side, hehe.. then you get the ownership value for feedback.



~Dk~

Same opinion from me, they need to focus mainly on gameplay features, instead on purely aesthetic features. With this, i'm NOT saying that i don't want such a feature like zooming into the planet, i really like the idea, but i think that for now it's a big leak of resources of the team, that is an indie team, and don't have such resources like bigger gaming industry. Now, i've prefer to they concentrate on gameplay feature, because the universe looks a bit "empty", IMHO. But the game it's one on the best and stable game i've ever seen, they need only to add material to it, so i'll prefer that if they want to implement the zoom on planets, they'll do after complete the game mechanics.



All IMHO, obviously