I figure I'd better make a post about this centrally. There have been two overall sentiments that prompted this:
1. "I'd really like more consideration for my [insert very complicated or very far-reaching-effects idea]."
2. "I'm really surprised that Chris gave up on his idea for [insert idea that turned out to be more complex or far-reaching than he anticipated]."
Why are we being so conservative?
Overall some folks may be at the same time going "why are you being so radical?" with other changes of ours, so we're honestly trying to hit a good middle-ground. We don't want to just give you the same game again as AI War Classic but prettier, but at the same time we don't want to lose the core of what makes AI War actually AI War -- so there's a middle-ground required there.
The ideas that ultimately get rejected (for v1.0 purposes) fast and have no real chance for discussion in a short-term sense requires are those that have too many risky changes to the overall design of the game, and thus risk having a lot of wrong designs before something that is fun can be arrived at.
It's more or less what happened with Stars Beyond Reach if we're not careful. A big part of why TLF went over budget, and why SBR went over budget and never finished, was because there were a lot of untested and semi-concrete designs (of mine) that turned out to need months and months of revision. With AI War having such strong source material to pull from, and a general sense of people wanting that source material to not be violated, I have a triple incentive to stick to that source material except when there's a good reason not to.
In other words: we risk making AI War II notably inferior to AI War Classic, OR we risk having an incredible amount of scope creep, or some awful mix of the two.
Given that AI War itself has a lot of people who are passionate about what the first game is, really going hardcore away from what it was is 100% not in my game plan. I feel like it's a big risk of going from Supreme Commander 1 (yay!) to Supreme Commander 2 (hey, where'd the stuff go??), or the same between Civ IV (vanilla) and Civ V (vanilla).
What does a core change to the game need to have?
Any sort of core changes to the game as a whole need to have the following traits:
1. Easy to test and implement.
2. Easy for new folks to understand at a surface level.
3. A strong and clear motivation for why this would diverge from the original in the first place.
4. Something I can formulate a concrete design from.
5. Not so different from the base game in terms of the "x factor" that we risk this not feeling like AI War anymore.
A number of ideas that I've wanted to explore (very much so) of my own have had to be put on hold or halted because they don't meet all of the criteria above.
Summing Up
Hope that makes sense. We're not trying to stomp on anyone's ideas, and who knows what will come in v2.0 of this game. But Chris has often been too lax when wearing his project manager hat in the past, and this time he's trying to be more draconian with himself and everyone.
What I think we all want most is a solid new AI War II that is a great jumping-off-point for more things. There are a ton of things that we can do after that point, but to get to the point where any of that is possible we have to get through the other pieces first. There are only so many changes that the core of the game can withstand at once while still being recognizable or having any hope of capturing the same fun, etc.
