Okay. Anyone that knows me at all probably knows what's coming here. In the course of every one of these betas, and betas for any other developers I may be involved with at the time (which right now numbers at zero), I have to do the negativity thing. That is to say, I do that thing where I'm even more negative than my default state. That first time for this to be done for this game has arrived.
My current thoughts on the game as it stands right now can be summed up thusly: it doesnt keep my attention long enough to get to any of the parts that require real involvement. As in, I've typically lost interest somewhere between turns 50-70. I end up not even seeing what the later parts are like because I just cant be bothered to go that far before I want to do something else. ORIGINALLY, it had my attention easily, but.... this turned out to be specifically because I hadnt fully gotten a handle on what was going on, so each individual building placement felt like it mattered, like it was a unique decision I had to make. Typically, with 4x games, this sort of thing (unit or building production choice and location) is always there. But the more I played, the more it lessened... until it wasnt there whatsoever.
The problem: The map itself. It may as well have exactly two tile types: "ground" and "water".... because that's what it seems to boil down to. Sure, I might find that my city is on the edge of a forest or something like that, but... this doesnt appear to matter at all. The difference seems purely cosmetic; it just doesnt matter where I place things in relation to what types of tiles. And even if that werent the case, each individual biome is VERY blank. When I look at other 4X games, the maps are typically complicated as heck. No giant biomes; things like forests are small, and there's probably all sorts of other things tangled around it. This makes the terrain interesting. It increases the desire to explore, and all of the different tile types being that close together in terms of how tangled up they are create unique landscapes where every spot is a unique situation requiring that you plan around it in some way. Every tile feels important because of it's relations to every OTHER tile; the different tiles that are near each other mesh together in a ton of ways to provide this effect. But here, they dont. There's just a blank expanse, pretty much everywhere. Buildings only matter at all in relation to other buildings. Which brings me to my next point:
Nothing really happens. The game, so far, feels *very* static. Nothing moves, nothing occurs, I dont have to deal with any events or anything from the other races, and there's not only no incentive to explore, there's no ABILITY to explore. I cant, as all I have are these static buildings. And yes, you could say, well that's what scouts are for, but... until I have some way of shifting huge distances across the map to where STUFF is, that intel is A: useless, and B: irrelevant, so I just dont bother for quite some time. And even when it is being done finally, I'm rarely looking at it. I dont have any investment in the whole thing; there's no sense of "ooh, I wonder what's going to be revealed in THIS section?" because I'll only find one of three things there: ground, water, or a city belonging to a different race. Which typically doesnt matter to me much, because I have no interaction with them whatsoever anyway. All I'm doing is placing buildings; and the static nature of the game is very prevalent there, as I just place the same buildings in the same places in the same order every time. The game isnt providing me with any reasons to do otherwise. The lack of complicated tile structures, plus the lack of tiles that DO things, plus the lack of anything moving around, means that my basic configuration is to be used every time, with little or no change.
This extends, as well, into things like the research tree. Now this one, honestly, I find is an issue for me in pretty much every 4x game. And I mean that: It's NOT just a problem with this one. The research stuff just isnt all that interesting, because there arent actually very many difficult choices to make here. The way research works, and the way the trees end up being lined out, they tend to have a sort of "natural" progression that you're somewhat shoved into. For example, let's say I have an option that will take 2 turns, and an option that will take 5. There's no difficult choice to make here, regardless of just what is in them, because by the time the 2-turn one is done, the 5-turn one is likely now not going to require a full 5 turns anymore. It likely will require only 2 or 3, as certain stats and such increase over the course of the game... meaning that the choice between them is meaningless. I could go on about this, as this just BOTHERS me in all games of this type, but you get the picture. It just doesnt end up being interesting, and my usual reaction to a 4x game saying "time to choose new research" can be summed up as "ugh". What's worse, is when the tech being unlocked is stuff I dont even need and wont be using for quite a long while. So far, that's been the case in this game alot of the time. After a certain amount of the basic techs are unlocked, I stop entirely paying attention to it, because they're buildings that I dont need to use at all until much later. The same goes for the social skill trees or whatever; they level up fast, but are always giving me options that I simply dont need. The one on the left, for example, almost immediately waves combat options at me.... but what am I going to do with them? It'll be AGES before they become relevant. I just click them in an arbitrary manner, and forget about them from that point onwards.
And with all of that going on, there's nothing to focus my attention on but that one unmoving city. I cant say "Well, there's nothing going on in THIS spot, so I dont really need to pay much attention to it right now, but THIS area over here is getting pretty loopy... I better manage it carefully", which is one of the things that keeps a 4x game going for me, because it's inevitable that there WILL be plenty of times when specific areas (usually specific cities) dont have anything happening. Maybe all of the enemy units are pressing up against a different border, or maybe the strategic decisions I need to make are more complicated and more immediately important in other parts of the map, regarding any number of things (not just the cities themselves). One way or another, there's SOMETHING somewhere that requires I pay attention and interact with it, rather than always being focused on just one area. And with the usual complexity of the map that these games have, when I switch attention to a different area, it typically actually FEELS like a different area, because the structure of the zone is just so very different than wherever I was focusing on before.
Now, throughout all of this, you could say: "But you're only talking about early game stuff... you do those things to prepare for the mid and late stuff, because those get pretty crazy!", but I can counter that in two ways. 1: I'm the sort of player that wants stuff to happen IMMEDIATELY (and I definitely know I'm not the only one that thinks this way). Put me in a long winded RPG of the sort where the game takes a couple of hours of cinematics and talky bits before you REALLY get to the actual game, and you've put me in a place that's a guaranteed cure for insomnia. With a strategy game of any sort, I want the strategizing to begin at the very start... and I also want it to feel like it MATTERS at the very start. Which is where I get to point number 2: Yes, you do alot of things in these games to strategically prepare for the later parts. But here... the game isnt presenting me with any unique situation in any new game. My "preparations" are the same every single time, because it's not presenting me with things that matter, with reasons to actually start coming up with any specific strategies. It ends up feeling like the early game could be outright SKIPPED, by me just sort of giving the game some sort of city template, which it just places at the start of every game, and the game begins at turn 100 or whatever. It would basically have the same end result, because I would have arrived at that exact point anyway, probably with little or no changes at all. And here we get to what is probably point number 3 when I think about it: First impressions. This bit could actually be kinda nasty here. I remember a very specific thing happening for new players when they would try out Skyward Collapse for the first time. The default difficulty in that game is pretty low, which means that, if you stay at that difficulty, you really dont have to DO much at all for quite awhile. I saw players getting the idea that the game was way too simple, that there was no depth, that it just wasnt interesting; why were they bothering with all of these complicated mechanics when they didn't even need to really pay much attention? Now of course having played that one quite a ton, I know full well that it's got alot of depth to it. But the early game in it can push away new players before they ever see the first hint of that (unless they, you know... up the difficulty, which is what I always advised with that game, not that anyone listened...). Right now, the lack of interaction, exploration, stuff like that in the early game is enough to push *my* interest away; even as impatient as I am, I know full well that plenty of players will get the same way about it. And heck, I end up getting that feeling even despite being so familiar with Arcen games, in the sense that I *know* that there'll be depth to the game in question, as I'm very familiar with the development style and techniques and ideas that tend to be in these games that you guys make. But the early game in this one knocks me out regardless of that. To me, that's a pretty big problem.
So yeah.... that's my current summed up thoughts on the state of the game as it is now (and yes, I've played the most recent version). Everyone can feel free to disagree with me or throw bricks or something, but one way or another, as always I felt I needed to explain what I am currently thinking about it even if many wont like what I'm saying.
And I apologize if it sounds a bit too negative... dont forget who is making this post; me sounding negative is like rocks obeying gravity. It's going to happen. It's not an unusual thing that appears JUST for this one game. One way or another, I'm going to end up complaining. Heck, even after doing the bullet-hell work on TLF's expansion, I still ended up complaining about THOSE blasted things despite having made them myself (I bet Chris remembers exactly what I mean here). Granted, I was happy with how it came out in an overall sense, particularly the part where it didn't explode the game. But I complained alot nonetheless, which might have been humorous for those observing it. So yeah... dont take it to mean TOO much here.
I think the game has alot of potential one way or another, as these typically do, and am hoping it succeeds as TLF did. As such, I will continue to complain and be generally abrasive as the situation requires
