First impression

[Billick]

I cracked open the game for about 2 hours yesterday.  Here's are my initial thoughts without reading any of the other discussions going on.

So the game right now has 2 fundamental issues for me.  Starting with the easier one to explain -  playing this game literally makes my eyes hurt.  It's not that the graphics are ugly.  Everything is so smushed together, and a lot of the buildings look so similar, trying to discern what is what started to be a strain on my eyes after about an hour.  I don't really have a solution for this one. 

The second issue is that I'm simply not getting that "one more turn" feeling that you look for in a 4x game.  I do have quite a few ideas on this one.  Starting with the victory conditions:  They all look the same to me.  Maybe this is just me not understanding the game mechanics, but I'm reading all of the victory conditions as:

Step 1)  Research some random technology
Step 2)
Step 3) Profit

I don't even know what I'm trying to accomplish.  With no meaningful long term goals, I can't really form any meaningful short or medium term goals, and those are the things that give you the "one more turn" feel.  Maybe these things become clearer after playing longer, but I feel like I should have a better idea of what's going on after 2 hours of playing.  I'm also, spending too much time trying to figure out basic game mechanics.  I still don't understand how the population cap works.  I don't know why higher level housing is better even though it houses fewer people.  I only have a vague idea what planet rage is.  There are just a lot of things that are only half explained. 

I have a few other miscellaneous suggestions that I will probably put into mantis. 

On the plus side, there are ton of cool ideas in this game.  I'm just not seeing how everything fits together yet. 

[crazyroosterman]

I cracked open the game for about 2 hours yesterday.  Here's are my initial thoughts without reading any of the other discussions going on.

So the game right now has 2 fundamental issues for me.  Starting with the easier one to explain -  playing this game literally makes my eyes hurt.  It's not that the graphics are ugly.  Everything is so smushed together, and a lot of the buildings look so similar, trying to discern what is what started to be a strain on my eyes after about an hour.  I don't really have a solution for this one. 

The second issue is that I'm simply not getting that "one more turn" feeling that you look for in a 4x game.  I do have quite a few ideas on this one.  Starting with the victory conditions:  They all look the same to me.  Maybe this is just me not understanding the game mechanics, but I'm reading all of the victory conditions as:

Step 1)  Research some random technology
Step 2)
Step 3) Profit

I don't even know what I'm trying to accomplish.  With no meaningful long term goals, I can't really form any meaningful short or medium term goals, and those are the things that give you the "one more turn" feel.  Maybe these things become clearer after playing longer, but I feel like I should have a better idea of what's going on after 2 hours of playing.  I'm also, spending too much time trying to figure out basic game mechanics.  I still don't understand how the population cap works.  I don't know why higher level housing is better even though it houses fewer people.  I only have a vague idea what planet rage is.  There are just a lot of things that are only half explained. 

I have a few other miscellaneous suggestions that I will probably put into mantis. 

On the plus side, there are ton of cool ideas in this game.  I'm just not seeing how everything fits together yet.

1 I think a lot of these stats on the ui need toltips explaining them really 2 the population cap works with your meals basically once you run out of meals then your population will stop increasing(cant remember if max housing applies to that it probably does but I have a faint memory of it not) 3 its better for a couple of reasons 1 it gives you more culture 2 this is also a thing for the apartments but any way housing buildings give adjacency bonuses to eateries meaning that if you want to put up a new middle eaterie then its better to put the mid level houses(condominiums) around it. 4 planet rage increases the spawn rate of rogues(I think?) planet rage is going to getting some tweaking to it so I wouldn't take what I say on that to literally.

[Mick]

I don't even know what I'm trying to accomplish.  With no meaningful long term goals, I can't really form any meaningful short or medium term goals, and those are the things that give you the "one more turn" feel.

This seems quite key to me. I definitely feel like the "one more turn" feel is lacking in this game.

That's definitely where I get the feeling in games like Civilization. I find myself following a saying lots of things like:
* I'll go to bed after I finish this wonder.
* Well, the wonder is finished, but KHAAAAAAAN! just declared war on me, I can't quit not, gotta teach him a lesson.
* I just took over this city so let me spend a bit more time getting that all settled.
* Oooo this new technology opened up some cool stuff. I'll stop once I build this new building in all my cities.
* OK, that's done, but I'm only 3 more turns away from the next World Congress vote...

[Billick]

1 I think a lot of these stats on the ui need toltips explaining them really 2 the population cap works with your meals basically once you run out of meals then your population will stop increasing(cant remember if max housing applies to that it probably does but I have a faint memory of it not) 3 its better for a couple of reasons 1 it gives you more culture 2 this is also a thing for the apartments but any way housing buildings give adjacency bonuses to eateries meaning that if you want to put up a new middle eaterie then its better to put the mid level houses(condominiums) around it. 4 planet rage increases the spawn rate of rogues(I think?) planet rage is going to getting some tweaking to it so I wouldn't take what I say on that to literally.

This stuff all sounds cool, but it needs to be explained in game.  What are rogues?   I think I had enough meals and housing but my population cap wasn't going up more.  Maybe I'm reading it wrong, or maybe it's a bug.  not sure.

This seems quite key to me. I definitely feel like the "one more turn" feel is lacking in this game.

That's definitely where I get the feeling in games like Civilization. I find myself following a saying lots of things like:
* I'll go to bed after I finish this wonder.
* Well, the wonder is finished, but KHAAAAAAAN! just declared war on me, I can't quit not, gotta teach him a lesson.
* I just took over this city so let me spend a bit more time getting that all settled.
* Oooo this new technology opened up some cool stuff. I'll stop once I build this new building in all my cities.
* OK, that's done, but I'm only 3 more turns away from the next World Congress vote...

Yeah, these are good examples of what I mean when I'm talking about short term goals.

[crazyroosterman]

1 I think a lot of these stats on the ui need toltips explaining them really 2 the population cap works with your meals basically once you run out of meals then your population will stop increasing(cant remember if max housing applies to that it probably does but I have a faint memory of it not) 3 its better for a couple of reasons 1 it gives you more culture 2 this is also a thing for the apartments but any way housing buildings give adjacency bonuses to eateries meaning that if you want to put up a new middle eaterie then its better to put the mid level houses(condominiums) around it. 4 planet rage increases the spawn rate of rogues(I think?) planet rage is going to getting some tweaking to it so I wouldn't take what I say on that to literally.

This stuff all sounds cool, but it needs to be explained in game.  What are rogues?   I think I had enough meals and housing but my population cap wasn't going up more.  Maybe I'm reading it wrong, or maybe it's a bug.  again I think their need to be toltips for a lot of the stats (as well as tutorial of course) if you've got the meals and empty housing then it sounds like you've encountered a bug unless you've got a lot of people dying for what ever reason rogues are those beasties you might have noticed around the map the only reason I call them rogues is because that's what their referred to in the notifications when they attack you.

[Billick]

I've played a few more hours so here's a follow up to my original post:

I managed to solve the eye strain issue just by playing shorter sessions and playing with the game zoomed all the way in most of the time, and that has helped. 

The game is somewhat more fun for me than it was with the new changes.  It's still not giving me that "one more turn" feel.  It's fun in short bursts though.

The numbers on the main HUD are way more helpful now (for me anyway).  I do kind of get the feeling that there is too much stuff in that panel right now.   I kind of feel like some of those numbers could be pushed back in to their own menus which you can look at when you want to, and they are only shown directly when there is a problem.