Very early feedback

[Tridus]

First impressions, as I happened to luck out on beta waves and get this one. I only got a few turns in for family reasons, and intend to go back later.

When picking a race, the screen is pretty dense with lists of "stuff". A couple of ideas there:
1. Group the race and subrace together. For example, all three Zenith options share a bunch of traits in common. It'd be clearer if you make it a two-step thing, where first you pick your race (with those bonuses/penalties), and then pick the subrace (which shows the new effects only).
2. Add some color, so that the penalties are red or something.

When landing, I got this:

I'm not clear on what the tooltip is telling me. Normal, is that the difficulty of the area as a starting zone, or the condition it's giving? Is that condition what I need to win the game? I have another area that is "very hard" and requires exploring 75% of the world, same question there. What is that condition for?

The border between the regions could be more distinct, so it's more obvious that the line is important and going over it will change things.

I have lots of options for landing sites within the region, but nothing to indicate why I should choose one over another. Does it matter which tile I land in?


One of the things I really loved in Civ IV was "Advanced Start", which let you tweak the game so everyone started with more than nothing. The reason why I loved it is that I really don't like the very early game in most 4X games, as a turn tends to take an average of six seconds, and it's mostly just clicking next turn. Without a unit, that was exacerbated even more here. I picked a tech, picked a building to build, and until one of those things finished there was literally nothing for me to do on a turn except hit next turn. The building I chose to build was a science lab (because why not), and that took 8 turns. The first tech was fast, but the second took longer, and I hit next turn several times in a row without doing anything whatsoever.

I know it's a common thing in the genre, but most other games give you a unit to explore with, so your likely not trying to skip four turns in a row without something coming up.

I don't know what the solution to that is, be it having the game simply progress multiple turns at once if nothing is going on, or tweaking the starting values of your city such that early game is accelerated and things happen faster, but IMO turns 2-10 were really low on engagement.

[Firemad]

I was going to post the exact same thing as you Tridus

But here is some more ideas/impressions

1) When picking a race  you can add the race picture in the race menu with maybe a description or a bio of the race to make it more immersive. Like Tridus I had problem to understand what was the difference between race and I did a lot of over to read the tooltips to understand correctly and it took me 5 minutes...  and without a picture I didn't know if I was an insectoid or another alien...well inside the game in the HUD I can see what race I chose but...too late if I hate insectoid

2) I just want to add that when you are landing on a green area (like in the screenshot of Tridus) , the color below the building is green also when you are selecting where to land...(it's hard to describe where is the color) I had difficulty to see the difference between light green and normal green. Well maybe colorblind people will have more problems then me but change it for yellow ? or another color. It's work fine for other land surface but for green...well it's meh

3) Also can you add in the tool tips maybe like this (B) in yellow or another color but a different one vs the text color for the shortcut in the keyboard for every button that have a shortcut small feature but lot easier to memorize the shortcut when you want to open the electricity menu etc.

Btw whoever created the theme song (the music in the title menu) is a god / goddess... sorry about that but: I (insert your favorite swear word here) love the song the CIV4 theme song without the expansion was my number 1 but you are number 2 in my list Can we have the soundtrack when the game is released ? =)

The HUD is clean. It's missing a clock in the option... In a turn-based game I always activate the date/clock because of the "well just another next turn and I'll go to bed syndrom" and 5 hours later you are still playing maybe add it in the top right corner of the screen

I love the graphic art of the game...but did I said the theme song was awesome ?

[crazyroosterman]

I was going to post the exact same thing as you Tridus

But here is some more ideas/impressions

1) When picking a race  you can add the race picture in the race menu with maybe a description or a bio of the race to make it more immersive. Like Tridus I had problem to understand what was the difference between race and I did a lot of over to read the tooltips to understand correctly and it took me 5 minutes...  and without a picture I didn't know if I was an insectoid or another alien...well inside the game in the HUD I can see what race I chose but...too late if I hate insectoid

2) I just want to add that when you are landing on a green area (like in the screenshot of Tridus) , the color below the building is green also when you are selecting where to land...(it's hard to describe where is the color) I had difficulty to see the difference between light green and normal green. Well maybe colorblind people will have more problems then me but change it for yellow ? or another color. It's work fine for other land surface but for green...well it's meh

3) Also can you add in the tool tips maybe like this (B) in yellow or another color but a different one vs the text color for the shortcut in the keyboard for every button that have a shortcut small feature but lot easier to memorize the shortcut when you want to open the electricity menu etc.

Btw whoever created the theme song (the music in the title menu) is a god / goddess... sorry about that but: I (insert your favorite swear word here) love the song the CIV4 theme song without the expansion was my number 1 but you are number 2 in my list Can we have the soundtrack when the game is released ? =)

The HUD is clean. It's missing a clock in the option... In a turn-based game I always activate the date/clock because of the "well just another next turn and I'll go to bed syndrom" and 5 hours later you are still playing maybe add it in the top right corner of the screen

I love the graphic art of the game...but did I said the theme song was awesome ?

1 that probably wouldn't hurt to have in.

2 I have this same issue my self choosing were to persificly put the lander can be a bit more time consuming than nesacery at times changing the lander landing colour to something more distinctive would probably be a good idea.

3 no comment I don't use shortcuts I just use default controls

4 the person who does all arcens soundtrack is Pablo I personally prefer tlfs soundtrack to this ones but this game does have a good soundtrack.

[Firemad]

Also I found a bug with Windows 10 (I don't know for other versions) but if I do ALT+TAB without any opened windows the game redirect to itself and I expected it to minimize on my taskbar instead of going back.

I thought it was a new feature of Windows 10 so I tried with another game and it did minimize.

If you have 1+ other Windows opened everything is fine.

Where can I post bug reports btw ?

Sorry I didn't read the forum and I didn't see a place in game for bug reports.

[crazyroosterman]

Also I found a bug with Windows 10 (I don't know for other versions) but if I do ALT+TAB without any opened windows the game redirect to itself and I expected it to minimize on my taskbar instead of going back.

I thought it was a new feature of Windows 10 so I tried with another game and it did minimize.

If you have 1+ other Windows opened everything is fine.

Where can I post bug reports btw ?

Sorry I didn't read the forum and I didn't see a place in game for bug reports.

click on the mantis link next to the home link there you'll be able to report all the bugs you want after signed up.

[jerith]

Where can I post bug reports btw ?

Sorry I didn't read the forum and I didn't see a place in game for bug reports.

You should definitely read the first post of this thread: https://arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=17285.0

It explains a lot of stuff you need to know about the beta process. (You can ignore the rest of the thread if you want. Chris keeps the first post updated.)

[Tridus]

Played some more tonight. Some things I noticed:

1. A water shortage is not showing up as a "problem" in the problems UI, the way that a fire protection or power shortage does. I didn't even notice I had run out of water until stuff started going wrong.
2. One of my apartments turned into a monster pit for some reason. Not sure what that does.
3. The game is telling me I have a fuel shortage, but I have a fuel mixing tank and only one building using fuel, so I don't see how that's possible. I'll attach a save.
4. I ran out of tech while not being anywhere near the goals the game gave me, so I'm kind of just puttering along throwing up buildings as they're required to fix problems.
5. Do some buildings have a radius of effecct? I added shops when it said I was short of shopping, but they didn't make a difference and I'm still short.
  - Yes, that's what it is. I demolished those and nothing happened. Then I built more closer to the apartments and they started working. Could also be my fuel shortage problem, but the game doesn't seem to be telling me what the radius on this stuff is.
6. I wound up just spamming barracks and then demolishing some other stuff to meet the act 1 objectives. The game then gave me the intro for act 2, which talks about doing stuff with natural wonders and such... only the AI has already surrounded me, and I'm not supposed to attack people according to "theplanet", so I'm not at all clear what I'm supposed to do.
7. I had access to lots of buildings that do stuff, but I'm not sure why I need them. Things like the buildings that produce poems and broadcasts and the warehouse are the most obvious examples.

I built a bunch of commercial offices early to get money, then aside from going for the objective just built what the game told me to in response to problems. As mentioned, I ran into problems where some buildings appear to have a range, but it's not clear what that range is. I'm really not sure why fuel can't be transported, and the game doesn't make it obvious. As a result, a lot of the gameplay was reactionary. I assume there's a strategy to do things far better than I did them, but I don't know what that strategy is or how to find it short of trial and error (or reading the forums).

Maybe I'm getting dumber in my old age, I dunno.

[x4000]

Great thoughts!  I'll need to really make things way clearer with the placement of service buildings.  I think that what I have planned with the radius stuff would kind of implicitly fix this, but we'll see.  It's a lot like the way Cities: Skylines handles it, based on what I have planned.  I got a lot of the code for that working, but haven't tied that in to being fully functional yet.

Hopefully with tutorials you'll wind up being a lot less lost in terms of the objectives, etc.

Good point on the water shortage and whatnot.  It does show up there in red and with the text SHORTAGE above it, but not in the way that you'd be used to for most everything else.  I've made a note for us to change that.