Dawn of War 3 sales and recent 4x games

[Draco18s]

And equally, how meaningful to the player.

[eRe4s3r]

It would be worth some discussion whether developers chain themselves to a chain of certain design decisions for 4X games and combat by spending large sums on art development (shipsets) that they now paid for and that is basically a loss unless they sell the game, and basically HAVE to use now too in some visible prominent way. If you follow this thought true, it would mean that spending large sums on art can potentially chain you to a design you might not actually have wanted. Especially when the spending was decided before the game design was properly prototyped.

It would certainly explain why Stellaris combat is so.. lackluster. Yeah, it looks pretty, REALLY pretty, but it's totally pointless to watch combat in Stellaris.

By the way, Dawn of War 3 still did not sell fundamentally more than 200k copies at full price now that the stats had more time to collect...  and it remains to be seen whether that will translate directly into less support for it.

[Mánagarmr]

From what I've heard so far DoW3 was pretty lacklustre.

[eRe4s3r]

So the elephant in the room of 4x games

Endless Space 2

What I can tell
# Rushed release

• Carrier ships, but no space-craft to mount, PDS weapons are linked to kinetic slugs only (dual use, basically)
• Research is missing an entire ring of tech unlocks (including a total lack of tier 4 hull upgrades for ships that clearly had them intended
• Very very pretty battles that are extremely badly balanced and totally pointless to watch (that's good, but also not
• Long Range missiles/lasers rule everything, short wave weapons don't usually get into range before blowing up
• AI does not upgrade ships
• If you don't want your game to end by turn 70, disable economic victory
• remember pirates from ES1? Yeah, they are back, and still totally broken
• Many many bugs
• Heroes with custom vessels that don't fit any art style

So basically, this game released way too early. I give them massive props for uber art polish, but art doth not make gameplay. And when I say art polish, I mean it, One of the most beautiful looking games right now (space ship wise)

You know what else is funny?
Publisher for Endless Space 2 : SEGA
Publisher for DoW 3 : SEGA

Notice a trend? ;P Is Sega becoming the new EA or Ubisoft?

Whatever the case, this is not the 4x to change the genre to anything worthwhile imo. I do love their presentation and unique races though. But... gameplay wise, this is... not nearly as good as I had hoped. Your fleets are limited to a dozen at most as well, and anything larger the game won't show you at all. Makes sense, models are really complex and exceptionally pretty.

Combat is like this
You select a tactic (difference is some kind of bonus/malus, and which of the 3 lanes maintains which weapon range)
You assign ships to those lanes
They drive along their lanes and shoot and explode at stuff
If a pass-by doesn't result in death (extremely unlikely...) combat is a draw
Guns have arcs and do occlusion check, if your ship has gun in front and enemy is behind.. well yeah, you better have missiles
Some lanes get close some don't. Most things explode before anything ever gets to short range (beams)

Economy is like this
Pop based economy FIDSI (Food, Industry, Dust, Science, Influence...)
More food = faster pop growth, we are talking extremely fast, complete opposite of Stellaris
You build improvements that count for all planets in a solar system, pop can be moved around inside the solar system
FIDI bonuses per pop can be extreme, some systems can have 57 pops, and a +5 Dust modifier on EACH of them + 1 improvement with 1 maintenance for 5 planets is extremely OP. Which is not bad but also not a lot of fun because nothing challenges you;)

Diplomacy is like this
Pressure vs Influence
Pressure allows you to make demands (refusal = war)
Influence is required for any diplomatic action
You got War/Peace/Cold War/Trade Treaty/Science Treaty/Alliance
and that is it. extremely dumbed down diplo.
And yeah, you can trade techs.....

So yeah, not sure what to make of this game... after Stellaris I actually think this is a step back

[Draco18s]

I'm going to just sit here and be smug and think, "I told you ES2 wouldn't be worth it."

Every single problem you highlight is a problem that the first game had. Maybe not as extreme, but it was there.

[eRe4s3r]

So speaking about 4x games again
Interstellar Space: Genesis
Previously known as Project: Star Sector

Yes, that is yet another 4x that clones (or tries to*) the feeling of MOO2 and goes into super-detail-micro-management direction which you will likely wish to automate within 20minutes of playing. I don't get it. Years and years MOO2 clones fail and fail and fail and fail, and yet a new developer springs up to rekindle the feeling of MOO2.. again, and again.. and again.

At this point, maybe I am misunderstanding how development works, but you'd think a quick look at steamspy would teach devs not to try a moo2 clone without a strong sci-fi writer employed...... and why you ask? Well, firstly we already got mainstreamed Master of Orion 4 (or whatever that was supposed to be, look how quickly wargaming dropped that, hah) Because again these games have nothing that sets them apart. Nothing that elevates them beyond Distant Worlds or Stellaris (in my mind, the 2 extreme niches of the genre that are exclusively successful exactly because you can hardly even call them space 4x games anymore)

I just don't get it. Are developers checking off checkboxes on a list when making 4x games? Wouldn't ONE of them stop to think "is this core gameplay loop even fun?" or "is this core gameplay loop even still relevant?"

At this point, maybe I don't want better gameplay in 4x games, but better writing (or *ANY* decent writing) affects setting, races, interactions, diplomacy.... without good writing, these things are all soulless and empty in purpose.

I am also gonna do something I rarely do, I am not even gonna bother with this one. I played so many MOO2 clones that I soured MOO2 (the original) for me in the process. Now, I can't stand this aging and outdated gameplay I guess ;/

[WolfWhiteFire]

At this point, maybe I don't want better gameplay in 4x games, but better writing (or *ANY* decent writing) affects setting, races, interactions, diplomacy.... without good writing, these things are all soulless and empty in purpose.

Yeah, to me the story and lore in many games is what gives it purpose. Sure you can fight these guys, but why are you fighting? Sure you are guarding this area, but why are you guarding it, what is there here that is valuable? Sure you are running around slashing monsters left and right, but why? etc. For all sorts of games, story gives it a purpose besides doing what you do just because. All those things you listed fit into the category of story to me.

Yes, that is yet another 4x that clones (or tries to*) the feeling of MOO2 and goes into super-detail-micro-management direction which you will likely wish to automate within 20minutes of playing. I don't get it. Years and years MOO2 clones fail and fail and fail and fail, and yet a new developer springs up to rekindle the feeling of MOO2.. again, and again.. and again.

They probably still make enough to make it profitable, same horrible reason tons of "developers" just buy assets and sell them as a brand new game. Not a happy reality, but the sad truth of many developers these days.

[eRe4s3r]

They probably still make enough to make it profitable, same horrible reason tons of "developers" just buy assets and sell them as a brand new game. Not a happy reality, but the sad truth of many developers these days.

Common misconception I feel like I must help clearing up, asset flippers don't make money from sales, they make money from trading cards.... but with a recent change you need certain amount of "trust" from an algo (Steam never said wtf that means) and certain level of sales and ratings to get them unlocked (as developer)

And nowadays, you'd be positively insane if you went about against reviewers like SidAlpha ( https://www.youtube.com/user/GreyWolf779 ) aka, if you pulled any crazy stuff as dev, you'd have "the man" after you. It's actually really nice we now have these personalities around who fight this

But yeah, clearly my taste of 4x games has mutated over the years, partially because I read the foundation series by Asimov and partially because more and more of these soulless moo2 clones pop up that I find objectionable. And I dunno if developers know this, but MOO2 *IS* on steam, it has 130k owners (who got it in the bundle from "Master of Orion" which has 190k owners) that's the TOP limit your MOO2 clone is gonna reach. Everyone else just does not care about MOO2, and that is a reality too. You can't sell to new and younger gamers with the promise of "harkens back to the feeling of MOO2" (Ps, harkens back is such a nice old phrase very fitting to such a doomed project idea ,p)

I find the idea of making a 4x that takes MOO2 gameplay as inspiration so alien that I am positively absolutely stumped why any sane dev would do this. It can not possibly be that they calculated they will make a profit. The indy apocalypse is in full swing. You release in a bad moment and you get 100 sales.

[WolfWhiteFire]

And nowadays, you'd be positively insane if you went about against reviewers like SidAlpha

From what I have seen, there are plenty of people insane enough to do that, one of the most recent examples being Alex Mauer who threatened to kill him.

find the idea of making a 4x that takes MOO2 gameplay as inspiration so alien that I am positively absolutely stumped why any sane dev would do this. It can not possibly be that they calculated they will make a profit. The indy apocalypse is in full swing. You release in a bad moment and you get 100 sales.

Not all of them are sane, Digital Homicide for example, also not sure how much those cost generally, but $40 times 100 sales would still be $4000 made, and cloning a game is probably nowhere near as expensive as making one from scratch. It could also be that many of those may have been single attempts by developers. A developer tries it, realizes it isn't profitable, moves onto something else, another developer tries it, and so on. I have no idea whether it is profitable for them, but in the past I have been surprised by what is profitable for people, and so I assume that if people keep doing it, it is somehow profitable.

[Misery]

Among all of this, I'm still just looking for one that's actually DIFFERENT.  Instead of trying to be Civ or... Civ, or perhaps Civ.   Or whatever space game, to be honest I've only played a couple of those, but they STILL seemed like the same bloody thing.  Revolving around godawful AI, no less.

I'd settle for a game that doesn't necessarily do much different, but at least goes the AI War route of "don't pretend the AI is another player" since that NEVER EVER WORKS.  Have the freaking AI in a role where the design admits that it's a freaking AI and works WITH it instead of against it.

Don't even care what the theme or story are, provided I even notice that.  Could be space, could be, I dunno, on Earth but like 50 billion years later, or it could take place in a bowl of soup, whatever, don't care, wont notice anyway, just something that doesn't make the same bloody mistakes over and over and over and over and over.


There, mini-rant over.  Honestly at this point I've kinda given up on this.  I've looked around some more, particularly with the sale, and.... yeah, it aint happening.  Other types of strategy games?  Sure, plenty of good ones.  But 4x?  Bah, I wont be finding any I like anytime soon.  Be very, very surprised if I do. 

[eRe4s3r]

You didn't like Stellaris nor Distant Worlds? ;P

Btw, AI development is in constant flux, though that news bulletin has not reached game developers yet apparently, with cloud AI computations you could already do amazing things but that costs real money. Reality is that only many-core cpu's would give you enough general computational power for even a simple AI simulation, and that would be playing like a human if you trained it to do that ^^

But until then, it makes equally no sense to me why AI is always handled like "another player" in those games, I think it's mainly because when these games support MP they make this concession never considering what the consequences really are. I actually think every species in a 4x should be unique and if the AI plays it, it should play 100% differently from all others. Heck, down to how each species perceives reality within the game. But it would mean basically making a new game for each race. Maybe it would be possible to do that in a very open scripting language but performance would probably suffer hard.

Basically, until game design evolves and old game designers disappear we will never see true advances in this genre. That said, most indy game devs don't have a game designer....

[Misery]

Stellaris I didn't have much time with.  It seemed to be missing something, and then I find out that this is USUALLY the case for Paradox games (sigh).  So, I set it aside, figuring I'd just go back later, but I haven't gone back to it yet. I'll get to it eventually.  Distant Worlds I don't have.  I was going to pick it up at one point, but I must have gone with something else.

[Mánagarmr]

Stellaris I didn't have much time with.  It seemed to be missing something, and then I find out that this is USUALLY the case for Paradox games (sigh).  So, I set it aside, figuring I'd just go back later, but I haven't gone back to it yet. I'll get to it eventually.  Distant Worlds I don't have.  I was going to pick it up at one point, but I must have gone with something else.

Paradox games = Play them three years down the line, after they've recieved significant content buffs and mechanics changes. Once you decide you like them, get some DLC. By then they're pretty fantastic. Stellaris is *exactly* that right now. It's an ok game, but it's crippled by shallow mechanics, but it's rapidly getting better.

[Misery]

This brings up the question of why they release them in that state to begin with.

On the note of Paradox though, they actually do make games of this sort that I find interesting.... the problem for me is that, aside from Stellaris, learning a Paradox game is like learning Dwarf Fortress all over again.   Otherwise, I'd probably be really into them overall.  Actually have a couple, but trying them out was like trying to walk through a brick wall covered in spikes.

[keith.lamothe]

Distant Worlds

Very in-depth sim, lots of automation that's actually halfway competent. But after I saw what was happening I disabled all the automation and gradually figured out how to do it all manually (takes quite a bit of effort, because your economy can and will stall in various ways). Result was a wonderfully efficient empire, but it was then too easy to steamroll the AI that wasn't playing very efficiently. Though I suppose I could have made it harder in various ways.

So basically I had a blast for several hours solving a deliciously complex optimization problem, but then I was kinda done. No regrets.