Worst fears coming true: Quarter to Three Review

[Aqa]

I have been mostly lurking on these forums but now I have one question:

Jonah, or someone else who knows, two things trouble me on the review.

1. How easy it is to know how efficient your ships (task forces) are in a battle?

2. Is it really as Tom says that in ground combat "there's no information available on where you're fighting" (concerning terrain)?

[STING]

Contrast this with SimTex's first two Master of Orion titles, affectionately dubbed MOO1 and MOO2. They relied on Sid Meier's Civilization model, in which icons were used to represent discrete and easy-to-understand units

[..]

...of which 585 are used by the planet's 4,643 industry points to somehow create 3,778 production points.

I don't know if anyone else noticed it. But some parts of his review are not very accurate.

MoO1 also used numbers, and not icons like in MoO2, the Civ series and Master of Magic. Also Moo1 is not based on the Civ model, only MoO2 is.

These inaccuracies decrease his credibility for me.
However, only seeing the screenshots of MoO3, I already had the expectation that the gameplay would be very bloated.

The software publisher had the same opinion remember? They ordered the developers to make it simpler. How they solved it? Put some more AI in to take over the micro management.

My personal opinion is, I like games where I have full control and where it's also fun to be in full control. For instance, in CIV3 the player-AI is much more on the surface than the previous CIV's, this doesn't make the game more fun for me.

In MoO3 there is AI all over the place, in the spirit of "decreasing micro management". IMHO, this is not a solution to the complexity problem MoO3 has; more a poor subsitute.

I think many people who are now enthousiastic about MoO3 will be sadly disappointed. The only thing I can hope for is that I'm wrong and MoO3 will be a fun game to play.

Complexity does not equals fun.
A game like chess is very simple in structure, but you can have great strategies with it.

My two cents.

[darcy]

Actually Moo1 did use icons, when you click a planet you see pop units, industries and missile bases in icon form. That was possible because the numbers were low and could be represented that way. Looks like someone multiplied them by 1000 for Moo3 because "more is better".

The software publisher had the same opinion remember? They ordered the developers to make it simpler. How they solved it? Put some more AI in to take over the micro management.

Which is quite strange when you consider this recent post by Moo3's former lead designer:

Ironically, it sounds like the game this reviewer wanted is the MOO3 design I initially tried to 'pitch' way back when. I envisioned a new MOO-series game as more MOO1.5: keeping MOO1's elegance, toning down the micro-management excesses of MOO2, and generally making a strategy game simple enough that you could "keep all the rules in your head." (I personally like those kinds of games very much.) But, of course, the publisher mandate was to go 'all out' making 'the ultimate' strategy game, and the MOO3 you'll soon be seeing is the result (which I believe turned out much better than this reviewer indicates).

I still would like to design that MOO1.5 game some day...

-- Alan Emrich on OSmoo

Could it be IG got more than it asked for?

[vee4473]

I think Tom made the same point about complexity.

If it turns out to be true that moo3 is mostly a mass of stats and numbers that have very vague relationships to game play, then i'm out.

I'll of course wait to see if this is true from those of you guys who buy the game and post your own impressions.

But, number crunching and overly complicated shifting of various abstract stats never made a game fun for me.

Just not my idea of fun, but that's me. I'm sure i'll be considered a "simpleton" or some such thing as a result.

[STING]

Originally posted by darcy
Actually Moo1 did use icons, when you click a planet you see pop units, industries and missile bases in icon form. That was possible because the numbers were low and could be represented that way. Looks like someone multiplied them by 1000 for Moo3 because "more is better".


Which is quite strange when you consider this recent post by Moo3's former lead designer:

[..]

Could it be IG got more than it asked for?

I think IG will get what they asked for. An "ultimate" complex strategy game.

I can't help it, but I'm getting Civ:CTP associations with MoO3, in terms of not living up to expectations and hopes. If this really turns out to be the case, I can't say of course.

[Spectrex]

Regardless of whether you personally like the game or not, this is a poor review. The last time I saw a review this negative was for Battlecruiser 3000 AD, and I really don't think QS/IG screwed up that badly. Tom makes a fuss over tiny graphical issues with no impact on gameplay (does it really matter THAT much whether we have 5 sacks of grain or 50 food points? ).

Furthermore, the purpose of a review is to approach a game from all angles, describing the good AND bad points, not just act as a vehicle for the reviewer to vent about how much he hates numbers. It's for this reason most good reviews have a separate area or section for the reviewer to present his/her personal opinions after playing the game ("reviewers tilt"). At the very least, the review should delineate between facts and his/her opinions.

Just look at The Orion Sector's article for comparison. If there was ever a review I'd expect to be fanboy-ish it would be that one, but TOS presented both the good AND bad points.

Finally, it's glaringly obvious that Chick didn't even TRY to get into and understand that game. The issue of the planetary AI comes up in the Orion Sector review as well, but notice how they spent a little extra time and found out how to use the system effectively. This isn't just a difference of opinions - one set of reviewers played the game 'correctly', the other didn't. It would have been OK if Chick had written "After I figured out how to play the game and use this information, I concluded that it was probably too complex from the start", but this is just sloppy.

Anyhow, there you go. I'd take this particular review with a grain of salt. It wasn't good enough for a professional publication, and it shouldn't be good enough for anyone else.

[Bort]

You mean he should have some ability to play them…the jury is certainly still out on that one as far as I’m concerned…and I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy the article as much as anyone…I just think the gentleman who wrote it has an outstanding knack for fiction. Seriously he writes like soviet propagandist… “these capitalist pigs will try and confuse you with big words like ‘Holistic,’ and numbers that sometimes exceed 4,000.”

You hear the exact same kind of stuff from kids in high school who get a D- on a test and blame the teacher despite the fact that they didn’t study…

“But because MOO3 is choked in a fog of its own inscrutable mechanics… an indecipherable pile of dense self-absorbed data…a bewildering swarm of data against black and blue backgrounds…colored stars strewn like confetti on a ballroom floor crawling down several screens…”

…which serves as the final malicious tassel on a magic carpet that just won’t fly. I think either Rantz is right and

“Tom for some reason has had a bone to pick with MOO3…”

or someone over at QS stole his better half. Either way I don’t see his review as a very good way of focusing on weak points in the game…cause he doesn’t point out any weak points…he’s like a French chef examining English cuisine “crap, crap, crap, and more crap…”

I won’t deny that I would love to see Moo3 succeed…I bought infogrames at 1.30 but I have to look a precedent…and like rohfman said

“don't tell me that the review was done by an unbiased professional.”

Ok that was mean, and I shouldn’t have said that part about his better half…but I was no more unbiased that he was…I would like to say infinitely less so but it doesn’t matter. At any rate, I don’t think his currency isn’t worth exchanging.

Now I really gotta go to church

[JonahFalcon]

BY the way. Tom complains that the viceroys do what he doesn't want them to do... HELLO! THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT!

Plus, maybe he didn't notice the button labelled "Planet Econ AI" - you can turn that off.

Moreover, I wonder how much time Tom spent in multiplayer... I took the time to examine multiplayer by having Floyd at Quicksilver play a short game with me.

[MarkG]

Also intriguing is the lack of reviews on said site, until this particular one. (and the odd lack of a Civ3 review)

a search in our news will reveal that Tom has reviewed Civ3, but this time his review was accepted by a site...

http://apolyton.net/news/search.php?Category=All&LookFor=both&Find1=Tom%20Chick&AndOr=or&Find2=

btw, looking at the results of the said search in our news archive i've found this
Civ3PTW preview for Gamespy

As for the multiplayer aspect, he gives it high praise by declaring that its make-up "may be turn-based strategy`s best chance at establishing an online presence".

Civ3PTW review for Gamespot

"Unfortunately, the multiplayer is... an unmitigated disaster". Chick goes onto describe this prime feature as "almost unplayable" with lag times amounting to nothing short of being intolerable. The next gripe is over stability concerns. As he puts it, "it`s not a matter of whether the game will crash, but when".

[JonahFalcon]

Tom's turning into Bruce Geryk.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Pallidyne
Actually what disturbs ME is that he WON two games....

-P

Quite.

And this:

"From the manual: "Your planetary viceroy handles some construction tasks without informing you of the details." And by 'some construction tasks', it means 'all construction tasks'. You see that little 'Planet econ AI' checkbox? Don't think your viceroy will be deterred if you disable it with some silly notion of running the planet's economy yourself. He'll continue to build stuff on the planet however he sees fit, sometimes even overriding your choices. He will let you wade four screens deep into the production queue, which he'll kindly leave empty. Otherwise, your participation is the viceroy's way of humoring you. Your viceroy doesn't really need you bugging him. As far as he's concerned, your job is to hit the 'turn' button so the computer can get down to crunching all these numbers."



And this, which looks like an 'IQ Test for Idiots' or something. I wonder if this is the tactical simulation orders menu :

[Comrade Tribune]

Oh, God!

"The outdated manual, which is obviously based on an earlier build of the game, manages to be simultaneously dense and uninformative. Extraneous information is liberally scattered through the 127 pages, of which 39 pages are exhaustive backstory shuffled between the chapters like commercial breaks. There's no index. "Really," the documentation seems to say, "this stuff is too complicated for you. Here's just enough information to discourage you from wanting to look any farther. Now why don't you sit back and let us take care of the details while you hit the 'turn' button?" "

This sounds worse than I expected, and I hate to be wrong.

I thought Moo3 would be 5/10, but this is starting to look like a 1.

[Comrade Tribune]

Uh, Huh

"The ship building in Master of Orion 1 and 2 was a large part of their personality. You designed space ships by stuffing their hulls with nifty little devices, maybe tweaking them to make them fit better or hit harder or skew further to the side to draw a bead on more nimble enemy ships. At its best, it was like building model spaceships. It was one of the signature elements of Master of Orion.

And MOO3 fails completely to recreate it. Ship building here has all the excitement of letting the AI draw up a laundry list of the most advanced components. Sure, you can get in there and do it yourself, futzing with the inconsistent interface and trying to decipher unexplained numbers and statistics. But don't expect any payoff, because you use your ships as fleets built according to esoteric rules that seem to have been inspired by Harpoon. This downplays your individual ship designs by forcing you to use them in clusters that are utterly devoid of personality. And then you get to the wretched tactical combat."

Speechless on Orion.

[vee4473]

Originally posted by JonahFalcon
BY the way. Tom complains that the viceroys do what he doesn't want them to do... HELLO! THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT!

Plus, maybe he didn't notice the button labelled "Planet Econ AI" - you can turn that off.

Moreover, I wonder how much time Tom spent in multiplayer... I took the time to examine multiplayer by having Floyd at Quicksilver play a short game with me.

tom mentioned the planet econ ai checkbox.

he said it didnt change anything.

[Comrade Tribune]

"But you don't have to watch the computer players to see the failings of the AI. Check your ship reserves a few hundred turns into the game and you'll see a thousand troop transports that you didn't order and that you'll never use. Hey, thanks viceroys. These will come in handy if I ever invade Normady."

I *HATE* games where the ai does even *ONE* thing with my resources without me explicitly telling it to.

It is obviously not possible to turn off all governors altogether. I will never buy Moo3, for this reason alone.