[Deprecated] Highest Priority Development Interest Poll [Updated for 1.016]

[ptarth]

This poll is now locked and deprecated. For the newest poll, please refer to: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15835.0.html.

Please vote on your top 3 interests for The Last Federation in v1.016 and later versions.

• Added some new options to get current trends.
• Added descriptions to the issues and tried to consolidate related issues.
• Please note that previous poll results are available later in this post as well as a link to the previous poll.
• If someone wants to write up a history of each of the options and how Arcen has previously deal with it, I can add it to this thread or provide a link to the summary.

Current Poll for version 1.0016

Strategy Game

• Focus on low level mechanisms to improve game depth
• The majority of recent racial AI improvement has been focused on specific actions (e.g., Burlust Hatred or Andorian Love) which are high level mechanisms. These cause major impacts in the game. However, it is argueably the lower level actions and options that the races have that make the solar system more living, organic, interesting, ultimately effecting game depth. An example would be GDP and population. The planets differ in habitable size by a huge range, yet the Burlust who are on the world with a 2 billion population cap doesn't vary much from the Burulust on the 100m population cap world (only in effective combat strength?). If the player had to be more concerned with the high population races (because they are more productive), than the low population races, that would provide more depth to the game. The player could then attempt to keep the higher population race in check or use it as the bludgeon to form their alliance.
  
  
• http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15559.msg171883.html#msg171883
• http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15525.0.html


• Federation Development
• Currently the Federation doesn't really impact the game. You just need X races in it to win the game. Membership in the Federation does cause some minor behavioral changes and bonuses, but doesn't majorly impact the game. If we could create more varying Federations that would extend gameplay depth. One example would be to make the Federation exist just like the races do. Give them a leader, a government style, the ability to go to war, develop trade, etc, etc. Additionally, the Type of Federation you have could be determined in initial Federation creation, wherein the races you Federate and the Hydra negotiate as to the characteristics of the Federation. Later political actions could be performed, by the races or player to shift the type and policies of the Federation.


• Unique Race development
• The Races have been gradually gaining more unique characteristics (e.g., Burlust Tormoil, Andorian Eden, Skylaxian Honorbased Warfare). Keep it up.


• Racial War AI
• Further develop the AIs ability to gauge and implement a successful war. Also, to retreat and seek peace if things start looking bad.


• Racial Strategic Level Mechanisms and AI
• Further develop a "mental state" for each race. Allowing them to measure and evaluate the past, present, and future of the system (other races strengths and weaknesses). Then give them the ability to use that information to their own ends.
• Currently the races are not active participants in the game. They don't have a goal they are seeking towards. They have sometimes end the game by military dominance of the system, but they aren't making choices designed to get them there. It just happens. This could be changed. Designs goals for the races and the mechanisms to obtain that goal. This would characterize their behaviors in game and then the player has to decide how they are going to deal with the race as it reaches toward that goal. For example, the Thoraxian Queen (in a particular mood) might be dedicated to the idea of a conquest victory of the solar system. Currently she can be warlike, but she doesn't do anything except make her attack more often. Deeper goals she would evaluate her goal, determine her strengths and weaknesses, and then compare it against the strengths and weaknesses of the other races. She then might end up plotting a way to get the Skylaxians to suicide their great armada into the Acutians thus enabling her lesser fleet to take over both of their empires. Or she might decide to bide her time and continue to build up armadas. Or she might think to ally herself to the Skylaxians and to get them to share technologies increasing her own strengths, get the Skylaxians into wars and steal the planets taken from the enemies and gradually build up her own strength at the cost of the Skylaxians. Then once she is big enough, she betrays them and takes all their stuff.



• Different Political Alliances
• Allow races to develop pacts of various sorts (trade, defensive, offensive, etc) to influence Racial AI and provide an intermediate step between cohabiting the same system and Federation (or war to the death).


• Planetary Trade
• Increase the role and influence of Planetary trade


• Pirate Enhancement
• Increase the role and influence of Pirates.


• Player Power
• Increase the benefits and the kinds of actions a player can do.


• Quests: More quests
• Add more quests.


• Quest/Event Chains
• Add events that later cause other events. Example: You receive reports of Pirates attacking a convoy. You can accept a bribe from the pirates, save the convoy, or kill everyone. If you save the convoy you earn the thanks of a Peltian Scientist. 5 years later he rewards you with a free tech (or nothing, or a sandwich). Each of the actions you choose can start its own chain and the event outcomes are probabilistic and branching as well. Similar to the quest/events in FTL.


• RCI Rebalancing
• RCI balance still needs to be adjusted.


• Ground Combat Rebalancing
• Ground Combat is still hard to understand. Bombing, Troop Power, Racial Troop Power, Technology bonus, CAS, and other things make it hard to predict and effect ground combat in a reliable fashion.
• http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=15055


• Defeated Race Mechanics
• Currently once a race loses its last planet, it is pretty much history. Develop more options than the somewhat weak insurgent route. Suggestions include: Rebel Fleets, Hydra Game Preserves, Skylaxian Refugee Centers.


• Federation Formation Costs
• The difficulty in forming a Federation is still off.


• Player Credit Income Options
• Players need more ways of making credits that are fun.

 
Action Game

• Burlust Duels
• Burlust Duels are still too dull and systematic.


• Player Weapon Variety
• Add more Hydra ship weapons


• Enemy Ship Variety
• We need more things to shoot at.


• Ship Graphics
• Steal some I-KP's ship redesigns
• http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15532.0.html
• (It's a joke, don't actually steal them. Get him to GPL them and then steal them?


• Combat Mission Balance, Gameplay, and Variety
• Combat has some rough edges where your predictions and the outcomes don't match up. The number of spy sats in missions. The arrangment of defenses. Passive unlisted hull bonuses.


• Autoresolve
• Outcomes of autoresolve still isn't quite right.

Information Access

• Additional Information Screens
• Add charts and figures for more things to compare Races including across time. Examples: Add racial information screens that combine information across all planets of each race, Historical graphs showing power (ground, space, etc) across time. This would also be a nice way of reviewing the game after winning (or losing).
• http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14104
• http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14103
• http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14100
• http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14517


• Increase Information Content and Mechanism Clarity
• Add more information to the already present screens. For example: Add monthly changes to the planetary information screen (e.g., Net Population Change +10m).


• Redesign Current Information Screens
• Combine current and monthly changes and otherwise make it easier to process relevant information. Example: Current Population, Min Birth Rate, Max Birth Rate, Min Old Age Death, Max Old Age Death,.... Each have their own entry on the planetary information screen. However, it could be combined into a single line (e.g., Population 100m (+10m)). Rollover tool-tips would then break down population increases and decreases by the various factors.
• http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=15002

Other Features

• Modding Support
• Push things out from the executable into accessible and modifiable data files along with the documentation to use it.


• Bug Fixing
• 20 bugs and suggestions are added per day.  Only 15 are addressed.


• Automatic Event-driven Modifiable Pausing System
• Control over pausing the game to allow us to react to events would be great.
• http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14455


• Font Adjustments
• The font is a little small on higher resolutions, can give us some font options?


• Steam Achievements
• Add more achievements to Steam.


• Space to Ground Combat with Giant Hydra Robots
• Do a major renovation to the battle engine with tons of new art to add more combat dispatch actions.


• Typos and Grammar
• Work on cleaning up the text.
• Enable the console or other debug tools
• Enable the console option or allow us access to the debugging tools, and tell us how to use them, so we can look into the game state just like you can.
• New Features
• No real aims, just add new features.

Previous Poll Summary
Top Highest Rated Issues: More AI, RCI Tweaking, and Increasing information availability and mechanism clarity.
Major work was performed on: RCI balancing, Planetary Information Screens, Autoresolve, and Action Announcements.
Link to Previous Poll: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=15507.45

Notes

• Forum Activity was up to 250% of normal the week after release. It has dropped down to 10% above normal activity.
• Steam and GOG forum activity is pretty slow too.

[nas1m]

Nice write-up ptarth!
Voted:
1) Mechanics clarity
2) More quests
3) Racial war ai
BTW: the player weapon variety choice is doubled .

[lifehole]

Wow, great in-depth poll here, good work. I'd even say re-hash this poll a couple times as/if problems get fixed, because there's just an almost overwhelming amount of options here. Which is good, because that means more specificity, which is good for the devs, if they see the results of this poll.

[windgen]

For the next poll, you should add an option for "Add more options to increase influence between races."  I feel like the attitude buildings have fundamental design problems, but replacement system(s) need to be in place before they can be nerfed / fixed / taken out.

[ptarth]

Do you think that would be contained within: Focus on low level mechanisms to improve game depth?

[GC13]

I don't think so. Not directly, anyway. What focusing on low-level stuff would do would be to give us lots of other stuff to worry about, so it isn't a game of adjusting racial attitudes and then building up armadas.

[I-KP]

• Ship Graphics
• Steal some I-KP's ship redesigns
• http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15532.0.html
• (It's a joke, don't actually steal them. Get him to GPL them and then steal them?

If all goes well they won't need stealing.

[ptarth]

• I-KP & Arcen interactions are sounding good.
• Voter presence is down about 50%. 
• Strong showings for gameplay depth and information clarity.
• The 1.018 patch addresses a major clarity issue (now to start rabble rousing for racial relationship and planetary growth information).

[ptarth]

Weekend Summary Update

• Forum attendance looks to have dropped off by half again this week.
• Likewise with Mantis reports.
• Major revamps in the system information screens. A good chunk of issues have been addressed. Still waiting on monthly change values.
• Logic in calculating Ground Strength, Science, and Manufacturing was addressed (and fixed). Races still vary between 1 & 100 in research rates.
• Still waiting for them to give in and switch to a pure additive or additive within class + multiplicative between class system.
• Ground Combat was partially revamped. Displays are more informative. How Burlust and Thoraxians get 2T Ground combat strength only somewhat of a mystery. Orbital bombardment makes this less of an issue. Burlust regeneration does make some Burlust planet sieges take too long.
• Major strides in quests. Underlying System level AI and mechanics still lacking.
• Concerns about the inability of the player to make major impacts upon Race Relations are increasing.
• Arcen plans seem to rely on using quests and a series of microactions (e.g., Andorian Love) to supplement that.
• I still don't think that'll work, but a larger revamp is going to take a large amount of time and planning.
• War/System Combat AI has been greatly improved.
• Big patch coming on Monday.
• While I can't say that Arcen does everything I wish, at least the most popular items in the polls get attention. Now I just need to rig the polls to only have my interests represented.
• Seeing some trends in players wanting Combat Mechanics adjusted in the upcoming week. Potentially due to forum population self-selection and not due to drifts in player interests.

[Misery]

I went with:


Combat balance/variety:  Aside from the fact that some of these battle scenarios are too same-y, the balance on some of them can get all sorts of screwed up.   Particularly on higher difficulties.  Which is bad when it's an actual quest battle, as opposed to a battle entered via the player making a bad decision and not noticing the data that would have told them that the fight would include 50 zillion flagships.

RCI rebalancing:  Arrrgh, these numbers, I hate these numbers.   Having to go into the thousands to represent really bad or really good is.... annoying. You can only affect those numbers pretty slowly... the extremes shouldnt be THAT large.

More quests:  I like the quest system alot.  It really reminds me of a very similar system that shows up frequently in Paradox's grand strategy games, where the game will just pop up a window with some important choice you need to make, with actual consequences and effects of varying types resorting from any choice you make.  For a game like this, it makes sense.... it would be kinda silly if you were running around the solar system, never interrupted while doing absolutely anything you want, and not being contacted by all these races you have so many dealings with.  Looking forward to more of these being available.

[ptarth]

• I'm going to update the poll soonish.
• If you want to propose new options, change current options, or remove current options, say something.
• Consistently in the polls are the ideas that tLF is: not providing sufficient feedback, lacking in game depth, and focusing on new features rather than fixing base mechanisms. These are the same noted flaws that are present in many reviews of tLF.
• Patch efforts are failing to completely address the critical flaws, but given that we don't know Arcen's design plan for tLF, we cannot know why this is the case.
• We can only hope that they get useful information from the forums, or ask directed questions to get feedback they can use.
• Previous releases suggest that this may be a reoccurring issue with Arcen's development strategy.
• Available forum statistics show that activity has returned back to baseline levels prior to the release of tLF. This suggests tLF forum is no longer very active and attention has returned to AI Wars.

[UnfriendlyBG]

I.... don't understand what's going on.  This forum, the steam forum, reddit... ghost towns.  I go to stream on twitch and TLF isn't even listed as a game.  This isn't a trivial or bad game, it should be evoking discussion.  At least in mantis you can see some discussion.  I think the devs should maybe try being active in the forums instead of pushing everything to mantis. I mean there's like literally 3 posts(not threads. posts...) a day to read, I think that's manageable.  I know I don't feel very inclined to discuss things in the forum because they basically say they're just going to read mantis.  That means I gotta make 1 post to discuss, and then a mantis ticket as well.  It's easier to just go with the mantis ticket.  I don't think having a QA ticket platform as the primary place to discuss things is a good idea, like at all.  It's good that stuff goes into mantis, but you can't just have discussions there because you don't want to fill up the ticket with a bunch of stuff.  That leads to just no one talking about much of anything.  Or the primary communication about the game being about shit like tooltips, and bugs.  Wheres the strategy posts? Where are the questions? I know if I'm going to put something into a mantis ticket, I always end up having to be like 'ok well is this really worth a ticket, will this interfere with something else id rather have fixed?, etc..."  Sometimes its nice just to post some casual stuff and have a discussion.  You want to have people talking about your game, I can't see how that would be bad for it any way.  And it's like well now no one posts in the forums so why should I even take the time to make a post?  I mean I made a post asking about the thoraxians and the burlust like several days ago that I thought would elicit some discussion for sure.  I didn't even get a damn response, it's just odd. Where the heck is everyone? 

[topper]

I think its mainly about the size of the community and speaks positively about the current state of the game if you consider that most of the forum posts were about bugs.

I would guess that TLF has sold something on the order of 10 to 20k copies. Perhaps 1% post in forums. Its hard to have much dialog with only 100 to 200 willing to speak if the issues with the game are not critical. Compared to Minecraft with millions of copies, or even AI war with probably closer to 100k sold, those communities are decidedly larger and more committed.

I would love to see more action on the AAR forum, or even participation in the succession game.

I'm considering opening a few new topics for polls on items already in the "considering" category in Mantis. But they needs a little sorting first to limit the number of poll options. This could help gauge the interest in expansion features. I just hope they avoid the same situation as the Skyward Collapse expansion.



edit: ok, so i sorted the mantis "considering" category a bit and ended up with:

• Combat options
• New small solar map features
• New large game features
• New actions (race and player)
• Options and settings for usability and enjoyment

Now these are all things already on their radar, but we can help identify what we want.
Should I kick off a few polls using these categories? Or should we continue with the current method. I'm just trying to start some dialog.

[UnfriendlyBG]

Well compare it to titles like the paradox ones

(ok I'm making this a new paragraph because i just have to sound off on Distant Worlds real quick)

or even this game distant worlds: universe which is 4 years old and ridiculously overpriced $60!!! I don't care that its technically 3 or 4 expansions and has deep gameplay, $60 dollars is a lot to ask for for a game that runs off what is quite literally the absolute worst engine/application/whatever that was professionally made that I can recall ever using. I mean you have to change your desktop resolution to change the games resolution, you can almost not even play at 1080p because the fonts do not scale with resolution, making a lot of users prefer to play at a lower resolution just so they can comfortably read the damned text. it somehow overrides the windows settings for per application sound levels and plays music at whatever extremely loud volume it feels like when you talk to another race, etc.  Someone volunteered to get on voicechat with me and walked me through the UI.... FOR TWO HOURS and i still have to spend literally 15+ minutes looking for a certain piece of information frequently.  To say that its rough around the edges would be an immense understatement (it seems like a decent game though). The Last Federation would be like the slickest AAA+ title ever known to man comparatively and costs 1/6th (now 1/3) the price (distant worlds apparently with its 3 or 4 expansions sold for $120 dollars exclusively on the publisher/developers website prior to having to join reality before launching on steam last week. it originally launched in 2010.  They have a philosophy of never discounting their games so the $49 that it is currently on steam is likely the cheapest it will ever be.  There is absolutely no way that TLF could be more niche than that title.

The paradox titles sell a decent amount of copies but its not like they're FIFA or something and Distant Worlds essentially does everything in its power to get you to NOT play it.  Anyways my point is I can go on reddit or the steam forums for any paradox title or even DW, ask a question and get an answer within an hour, usually just minutes with like ck2.  You go on the steam forum for TLF and you see relatively straightforward questions (albeit that I don't know the answer to) asked 5 days ago go unanswered.  It's just strange to me, TLF deserves a lot more people talking about it, and I don't understand where the heck everyone is and/or went.

Anyways, about the poll: 

It's funny because I actually don't really want any of those things, not at the moment.  Theres too much stuff that needs to be ironed out or bolstered in the game as it stands before I'd even want to add more features.  Like so much of the foundation is laid it just needs to have the potential realized.  You have to have a solid foundation before you start throwing new stuff on top of it, in my opinion at least.

Like for example, I'm not even sure if it's possible to lose the game on normal strategic without permadeath if you have any sort of semblance of what is going on.  And the time I played on hard strategic it was such a completely unbalanced frankly poor experience dictated entirely by initial planet compatibility, natural disasters, and raiding.  Essentially everything but what the player can actually influence.  I had FOUR planets with 0 birthrates and irrecoverable RCI values within the first 15 years of the game.  I'd like the game to be a little harder but not entirely decided by the RNG. permadeath just isnt appealing to me because almost everytime i die it's because I was simply not paying attention for a few turns after like 80 turns of combat, not because I completely screwed up or something. I'm not really looking for something to make me pay extremely close attention to the combat because it's frankly way less compelling to me than the strategic map.  Its fun and a good way to spice things up, but I think the 30 years of careful plotting I've done should be more important than spacing out for 3 turns and losing the game instantly. That's just me though. I haven't tried permadeath maybe i'm completely wrong and its lovably awesome.

Anyways, if it was up to me I would completely rebalance everything pertaining to RCI before doing anything, even fixing typos.  That's how important I think that part of the game is, and it should be treated as such. And it has quite a bit of issues, that have been pretty thoroughly discussed already.

[nas1m]

As mentioned in the other thread I would like a poll item to have the warlike races revisited in terms of the impact they have on the overall game - I have yet to see them take a dominant position - even under more or less ideal starting conditions with regard to their home planet.