mqpiffle wrote:

Let's start with the inability to load saved games, then move down the list of disappointments from there. 

I had no problems loading saves, but I did note that in one game, I’d substituted Franky for Vlad, and I saved that game and came back to it later. When I reloaded, Vlad was back in charge. Sometime between the time I saved, and the time I reloaded, Vlad killed and replaced Franky. Cool feature, or super awful bug? You decide. Lol

If the game fixes its pacing, most importantly the tech to era ration, it would definitely be in a releasable state, when i get to medieval tech, im already in the industrial era, but for me thats the only big flaw i see in the game.

I would agree that once the science and era pacing is balanced the game will be serviceable, tho I would like to add that Naval is also among those possible issues that need serious work.
If they delay, as a pre-orderer I would just play the beta/EA version forever.  Even in its current state it beats out EL and Stellaris for me.

Slashman wrote:

GlorySign wrote:

I really love the Amplitude games. I hope this one will do well so if this truly is as they said "the game they always wanted to make" please don`t release it in this state. Don`t make this another Cyberpunk 2077 and keep your good game history record untouched. Right know except music and graphics it is much worse than Endless Legend but the game has a good idea and frame that if it gets worked on more it can become an amazing game. Please make the game good, take all the time you need and release a great product like always

Did you play Endless Legend at launch? That game was so hollowed out it wasn't funny. I remember when it had ZERO AI and no side that wasn't as simple as the Vaulters could play their game. I also remember that people were all raving about the district system and predefined regions. No one was talking about the fact that the AI (such as it was) was abysmal at settling and managing districts.

Rose-tinted glasses are a real thing. If you go back to the beginning launch of any 4x strategy game...you'll see that they were rarely as stellar as folks remember them being...and that all the fond memories revolved around the new and interesting mechanics that the game brought. I doubt Humankind will be much different. Then again I have been wrong before...

The AI in EL is still really bad, though. It barely manages settling and building. It still can't do most quests and it always just kills minor factions. It doesn't contribute to competitive quests and global quests. I think the only quests that it can do are its own faction quests. And it's bad at combat, too. So... I'm not hopeful for the Humankind AI. Thankfully, it's moddable.

But just because most 4X games aren't great at launch doesn't mean that Humankind can't be. I'd rather wait another few months and get a better game. I'm sure that SEGA doesn't agree.

I had fun with the open dev and if they fixed a few of the issues, such as pacing, I would be happy to play it in this state. It's not going to be perfect, but literally every other big 4x game has been missing features at launch. Civ V didn't have religion in the base game, and Civ VI lacked a world congress. But they were added in later. I don't think every 4x game has to excel in every aspect. I will admit that there are a few systems in the game that feel a little undercooked, but the game is fun and it's issues do not detract from my enjoyment at the moment. If Amplitude feels they need to push it back, they can, but I just don't think they need to. The game does enough unique and interesting things that will set it apart in the 4x genre

darkedone02 wrote:

mqpiffle wrote:

Let's start with the inability to load saved games, then move down the list of disappointments from there.

I think it's because of the way these scenarios are design, you got a term limit of 100 turns on opendev victor, and now have 200 terms in opendev. What's the point of saving your game when there is a small limited amount of time? you basically spend 4-6 hours in one scenario alone.

This is interesting as I only had one save that failed to load and gave an error message and a couple which stopped loading. The first was after a crash I went back one extra auto-save and it loaded and I continued. With the ones that stopped loading I just restarted the game reloaded the save and continued to play.

I already bought the game a few weeks ago before closed beta on the expectation that it is going to be released in August.

They need to fix the bugs (invisible unit, graphic performance issues on NVidia cards, next turns/war settlement bugs), but game balance/pace is not a big issue, that's what balance patches are for.

From someone who bought Cyberpunk pre-patch, this is not Cyberpunk. It is playable. It should be released after bug fixes. Balance is a matter of patches, mods, expansions, DLC, etc not release delay.

Echoing the sentiments that I think many of you are looking back at major 4X releases with rose tinted glasses. It's a hard genre to develop for, with a niche following, and it can take years to tweak the balance because by their very nature 4X games are a mess of interconnected systems that push and pull on each other in unexpected ways and frankly basically every game in this genre is released half finished and iterated on by expansions. (Anyone remember vanilla Civ V, for example?)

I think it would be more fair to compare it to the basic releases of it's contemporaries, and by that standard imo this game more than measures up. (with a bit of bugfixing, of course)

waven wrote:

It depends what the devs want/can afford to get.

If they want an ok game, that works and people will enjoy. They have to fix the pacing, some balance and bugs. I think this could be done prior to august.

If they want a very good game that will compete with other released 4x, then they will have to push back. There are so many systems that I think they should redo from the ground up.

I very much agree with this assessment.
Unless there's a lot of features that they are hiding from us, the game will simply be "okay" by august granted that they fix the bugs and the balance. 
However to make a great 4X game, I see a lot a lot a lot of work needs to be done, particularly from the Design team and the AI Team. If by some miracle the release version of the game turns out to be great with more fleshed out features I will be genuinenly impressed. 

If they're only going to release an "OK", "playable", but "not great" game and then rely on future DLCs to fix the problems, then they shouldn't be charging full "great game" prices for the initial release. However, since they are charging the normal AAA game price of $60, I expect a great game. Unless the internal builds are substantially better than what they gave us for Poe, there won't be a great game in August.

Corgiwealth wrote:
Cities can't be specialised to provide for your empire, excess food made in a city rich with farms can't be sent to cities that don't have a lot of fertile land. Being able to create "bread-basket" cities is massively important. Its a major reason many cities were built, especially to provide for cities that had become so urbanised they'd lost land to be able to farm.

Funny thing is you can actually transfer "food" (population rather). But the only good way is with a MILITARIST affinity. That lets you make units out of population for free, and transfer them to another city (you just move there and disband them). I don't know how intended that is, but having the option to do that only in military affinity is silly. You could also build scouts without military affinity, but with specialised food city, you probably won't have production to do it effectively. Ans you cannot transfer production which is a way bigger problem for that.

SirSaab wrote:

mqpiffle wrote:

Let's start with the inability to load saved games, then move down the list of disappointments from there. 

I had no problems loading saves, but I did note that in one game, I’d substituted Franky for Vlad, and I saved that game and came back to it later. When I reloaded, Vlad was back in charge. Sometime between the time I saved, and the time I reloaded, Vlad killed and replaced Franky. Cool feature, or super awful bug? You decide. Lol

It is because it will load the game with the characters that are on the homescreen and Vlad is the Default. If you change him to Frankie every time new games will load with her.

CristataC wrote:
It won't have the same amount of depth as Civ6/Stellaris/Gal Civ/EU4 with their years of expansions.

I strongly disagree. I think the depth of the main mechanics in Humankind is way better than Civ6. Placing quarters is so strategic, battles are more strategic, synergizing cultures is more strategic, the terrain is more strategic. The only aspect which is kinda boring and shallow is religion. But all other concept that are in the game feel way more directed towards creating interesting choices than in Civ6. I am a huge Civ6 fan, have gotten all the expansions and player them for over 1300 hours, but the problem with Civ6 is that it somehow limits your choices to a smaller range. The only reason why Civ6 feels still so interesting is because of the quantity of game mechanics. What I like about Humankind is that it is more complex than it is complicated. Complex means that it has strongly interacting elements (industry, science, population, stability, influence, units, all directly interact with each other). Complicated means that it has a lot of different elements. Civ6 has so many different features but they don't feel like they there designed to work together as much as the game elements in Humankind feel. So I think Humankind does a better job at making me consider different choices. I think if Humankind is going to grow the same way, it will be a great game. People just need to be a bit patient. That won't happen within the next few months. It is the first version of hopefully a long-time series. Developers have to consider the economic risk of such a product, so I think they wont commit all of their available resources until they see that the game IS a success. If we as a community want the game to get better, then besides our honest feedback here, we also need to make it a commercial success, and that means seeing it's potential.

Corgiwealth wrote:

Populations should be the primary hook for developing and maintaining yields, it makes everything easier to understand and makes it easier to base mechanics. Population should be the primary driver behind FIMS, Influence, Stability, Military Units, Faith. They should be the driver and crux behind your empire, gaining more population and creating more jobs to give to those populations should be the rule, the exception should be passive modifiers to yields.

I completely agree. But in this game, the population is a burden to FIMS, not a bonus. Farmers produce 6 food and consume 8 food. Cities can produce large FIMS without a single human being living in them. All population is useful for is to buy out buildings or make units.