Moo3's Death by a Thousand Cuts

[Zanteogo]

No refitting? Are you sure?

Last thing I heard was that ships in reserve get upgraded automaticly over time...

[Xentropy]

Originally posted by RolandtheMad
Here is the solution - find a decent player that you feel comfortable about not having timed turns with, then restrain yourselves from obsessive-complusive micromanaging. No extra coding required.

After you micromanage X number of colonies you can pretend the IFPs prevent you from further micromanagement.

It's not a very effective solution to have to trust the people you're playing with (and thus be limited to only playing with friends, learning their playing styles and rarely being surprised like you would be playing with new and different strangers) than to just have IFP's in the game and put in an unlimited-IFP option so you know the game is doing your policing for you.

[Comrade Tribune]

Re: The Energizer Bunny

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
That's why I think the game should be a lot simpler. Keep the gameplay smooth and avoid clickfests.

This would be definitely the nightmare for everybody who prefers SP, and sees the point of a strategy game in solving ultra-complex problems, as I do.

The last thing I would want is another CivIII. (Moo1 was great for its time, but the simplicity was dictated by hardware limits, it was not, I believe, a design decision.)

[Kc7mxo]

It's not a very effective solution to have to trust the people you're playing with . . .

heh, this made me think of the old board game, diplomacy. Forming alliance is the only way to win, but there's nothing preventing alliance breaking either. . .

but we never played it at school cause we were rather worried about the long term reprucussions and repeated vengences that would likely result. Some of us still haven't forgiven eachother for certain starcraft games.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Not a whole lot. What really got me is QS was going to put all this "insanely great" stuff into the game, then quickly cut them all out - and then some.

Sid knows what he is doing, Quicksilver doesn't.

Ah, you are a BT then so you know what you're talking about or are you just spouting off your opinion, like every one else?

Just checking...

[Xentropy]

Originally posted by Ozymandous


Ah, you are a BT then so you know what you're talking about or are you just spouting off your opinion, like every one else?

Just checking...

Personally, I'm more likely to listen to a "random person spouting off their opinion" than a beta tester after reading the official MOO3 boards.

People who were very much anti-cuts and seriously disenfranchised with the game before they got their beta copies are suddenly all glowy and happy in their reviews of MOO3 now that they're a tester. It smacks quite strongly of "post a bad review and you don't get the next build" strongarming from the same people who rolled Alan Emrich's head for "creative differences" (you know, Alan wanted to make a good game, and IG wants to release another cookie-cutter clickfest, so they just couldn't work together well) and hamfistedly mod out every slightly anti-QS/IG sentiment from the official boards. (Heh, it's funny, even I have some bad things to say about Infogrames, and I'm a stockholder. :P)

You take a group of 50 or so beta testers ("randomly selected" my ass, too, almost every "winner" is some fairly popular board poster going all the way back to the 2001 community), and I don't care if your game was written by God Almighty, ONE person out of those fifty is going to dislike the game in some way. Even Blizzard games are disliked by at least 2% of gamers, and they're considered the "holy grails" of PC gaming by most people (for some reason; personally I'm not a big fan of most of their stuff, so put me in the 2% :P). So for NONE of those beta testers to have a bad thing to say about the game just means they're being told what to say and not say, on a level far beyond your usual NDA, and ergo their opinions can't be trusted.

[vmxa1]

Wow, neither Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo cut it?

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by Xentropy
You take a group of 50 or so beta testers ("randomly selected" my ass, too, almost every "winner" is some fairly popular board poster going all the way back to the 2001 community),

Bulls***. All of the BTs outside the contest are fairly popular board posters. However, only one of the contest winners was a fairly popular poster. Note that at least a couple of the BT impressions and AARs were not from Xentax, Sencho, or CK. Also note that some of that "fairly popular" group had been critical of the direction QS/IG was taking after the, um, events of the spring.

[RolandtheMad]

Events of the spring eh?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ozymandous
Ah, you are a BT then so you know what you're talking about or are you just spouting off your opinion, like every one else?

Just checking...

That Sid knows what he is doing and QS doesn't? Isn't that a bit transparent?

[nato]

I was never sure whether I liked IFPs or not. However, I'm sure of one thing. The removal of IFPs is a very bad sign for MOO3.

From the start, IFPs were constantly mentioned as a major feature of the game. They weren't just a small feature, they were an integral part. Also, they were supposed to be MOO3's big new innovation.

Taking such a major component out of a game this late just CAN'T be a good sign, whether I liked the idea or not. I think its a major warning sign that MOO3 is not in good shape, and is mostly being hashed together.

Now, I find from this thread that they removed ship refitting & upgrading, and I'm not happy at all. I liked that a lot in MOO2.

Cutting capture ships is a big loss too. That was a whole class of ships, and almost even a style of race if you went for ground combat bonuses.

But what really gets me are these cuts:
Ability to rename systems
Ability to choose empire color
No choosing ship apperance

These bother me for two reasons. First, I just don't understand how hard they can be to include. Things really must be desperate. At least match MOO1!

Second, it pretty much says that customization is a low priority. I can understand this not being a big deal for some people, but it is for me.

I'm getting pesimistic about MOO3 now. I think I may wait a year for the patches; I sure wish I had done that for Civ3.

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by nato
But what really gets me are these cuts:
Ability to rename systems
Ability to choose empire color
No choosing ship apperance

These bother me for two reasons. First, I just don't understand how hard they can be to include. Things really must be desperate. At least match MOO1!

MoO1 didn't have to worry about multiplayer, which is the stated justification for not allowing users to pick empire color (and which generalizes even moreso to not allowing users to rename systems).

[nato]

That seems kind of thin to me. Plenty of RTSs I have played let you choose your color, and I'm pretty sure you could rename cities in CivNet. Using MP as an excuse doesn't hold up to me.

[Harry Seldon]

You would think these simple features would have been included from the start of production. I saw they locked colors because they use specific bitmaps and didn't want to retexture all the menus and such but it seems odd that if multiplayer uses separate color schemes we can't access them in single player.

[vishniac]

One more cut.

Outposts have been gutted.

http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=247912