New review @ Games Domain 2.5/5

[Corentor]

Originally posted by XentWraith
I think some of you are missing a rather important point. Back when development on MOO3 started, Quicksilver was very proud to say that one goal for this game is to increase its appeal for the masses (ring a bell?). Anyway, because of that we have "governor AIs" etc. so it could ease in new gamers to it. I do not wish to be the one to spoil the party here, but if anything is true about MOO3 - it would appear it has a monster learning curve and a rather unaproachable personality.

Maybe they have managed to make it accessible. Tom Chick said all he had to do was click the turn button . Seriously though, from the review, Tom seems to have indicated that the AI is good enough to give you a strong enough economy to win. All you have to do is take care of diplomacy and fleet management.

The problem Tom found was that he actually wanted to do the nitty gritty and the AI confounded him and there is so much information to absorb to do the nitty gritty micro that he found the experience unsatisfying.

[dadacp]

I like spreadsheets--they're a good way of looking at a lot of information at once. I like hard numbers, not fuzzy icons. I like the realism of giving orders to subordinates, who may or may not implement those orders in the way I intended. I like the realism of hidden complexity. I am aware that understanding the full ramifications of technology isn't easy.

Finally I'll have a realistic empire game that doesn't expect me to make all the decisions for a year of an entire civilization in only one minute. RTS games give me the thought: If I had only one minute per year to be president of the USA, I couldn't do a very good job. Now with MOO3 I can hope that George Bush doesn't just "click the turn button" and let everything happen by itself...

[darcy]

Why create such a complicated economic model when you are forced to have the AI run it through viceroys?

Because that's what Hasbro asked for?

It's easy to blame the publisher for everything, but the truth is, QS could just have refused. At least if their contract was solid.

I like spreadsheets[...] I like the realism of giving orders to subordinates[...]

Fair enough. There are many gamers who do.

Unfortunately, this school of thought has nothing to do with Master of Orion, which is indeed based on the Sid Meier design philosophy. Why did QS use this franchise name if their game has so little in common with the previous titles? One thing is for sure, their completely unique genre-defining 5X game would have got less media attention without this name.

It seems that people who expect MoO 2.5, which is a very reasonable expectation for a sequel, will be disappointed.

[rhofman]

I don't think Moo 2.5 is reasonable. That is a seven year old game. Don't get me wrong, I've played Moo2 for at least double the game hours compared to any other game. It was great. "Was" being the operative word. I don't know if Moo3 will be as addictive but it needed to be "bigger" than Moo2.

[delmar]

Originally posted by dadacp
I like spreadsheets--they're a good way of looking at a lot of information at once. I like hard numbers, not fuzzy icons. I like the realism of giving orders to subordinates, who may or may not implement those orders in the way I intended. I like the realism of hidden complexity. I am aware that understanding the full ramifications of technology isn't easy.

I agree with all the above. Small problem is, there are a lot of things in RL that you are not likely to get in a game anytime soon. In RL, you can fire (execute? ) subordinates if they consistently don't obey you. You can pay a group of scientist to find out the "full ramifications" of a technology. The usual solution you find in games, like that the player knows exactly what a technology is good for or that governors do exactly what the player tells them to do is not realistic on a micro level but they are a good abstraction (workaround if you will), in my opinion.

So I would be careful to classify flaws in the design and/or implementation of a game as realism improving elements...

[Yodasplat]

Originally posted by delmar

I agree with all the above. Small problem is, there are a lot of things in RL that you are not likely to get in a game anytime soon. In RL, you can fire (execute? ) subordinates if they consistently don't obey you. You can pay a group of scientist to find out the "full ramifications" of a technology. The usual solution you find in games, like that the player knows exactly what a technology is good for or that governors do exactly what the player tells them to do is not realistic on a micro level but they are a good abstraction (workaround if you will), in my opinion.

So I would be careful to classify flaws in the design and/or implementation of a game as realism improving elements...

It's not a bug! it's a feature!

Good point there. In real life though... firing people is often a lot harder than you would think. I have plenty of examples of people (in my company and others) that are incompetent and insubordinate but that (in spite of been constantly being written up to HR) don't get fired. For political reason. So we have to cope with them and their sloppy performance.

If I remember correctly in MOO3 you have the option to deactivate at least the Viceroys and take over their function ... not realistic but if the AI gets annoying too much, you can always take it out of the picture.