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Hello all,
As a disclaimer, these are all just my opinions, and I am open to hearing other points of view regarding my ideas.
As a bit of background, I am a computer science graduate student at the University of Arizona, and a huge fan of both MOO1 and MOO2. This being said, I've followed MOO3 for awhile, even through all the recent bad reviews, convinced that anything Master of Orion based could not be that bad. It must just be that the reviewers weren't fans of that type of game. Today, after having read the entire manual and the ReadMe file, I fired up the game. It started out well enough. The intro was cool and set up the game well (although if you hadn't read the manual you'd probably be left scratching your head). All hyped up, ready to spend most of the day before class lost in a brand new Master of Orion universe, I started a new game.
Four hours later, I sat watching the uninstall program running, wondering what went wrong.
Now, I know many of you at this point are thinking "Well, he didn't give it a chance. The learning curve is usually 10 or 15 hours," In reply, I say "So what?". I do not pay 50 dollars for games in order to force myself to play them, hoping eventually that will magically become more fun. I have no problems playing a game for hours to get the hang of them, but it should at least be fun in the process. That's the point of the game, isn't it? Besides, I am firmly convinced that my two big problems with the game would not fade with time.
The first of these is the fact that the game just feels unprofessional. It seems to me like a bunch of people who did not know how to program or design software, but were fans of the first two games, got together and tried to throw as much together as possible. Having no experience with software design whatsoever, they apparently did not judge how much time adding each feature would take, and thus the game ended up as a mess. They've taken everything that was good and well designed about the interfaces of MOO1 and MOO2 and removed them. Instead, I now have to dig through 4 menus in order to access the build queue for a planet. In the past, it took 2. Why? Why did they make things more complicated? They broke two key rules: 1) if it ain't broke, don't fix it and more importantly 2) KISS (keep it simple, stupid). Playing a game should not give me a headache. Rather than follow the example of MOO2 (take the good parts of MOO1 and build upon them), they redid everything, but they redid it all badly. Take, for example, the diplomacy screen in MOO2 vs. MOO3. In MOO2, just from looking at the screen, you can see what treaties you have, what benefit you are receiving from them, how many spies you have in the empire, what those spies are doing, and the overall relationship between your empires. All of this on one screen. In MOO3, you have to click through various tabs and on each leader icon in order to see the same information. This is not an improvement, this is a de-evolution. Compare either MOO1 or MOO2's interface to MOO3's, and it's obvious which one is inferior. However, even all these flaws in presentation do not necessarrily mean the game is bad. While they make playing the game more of a chore, if it weren't for the second major problem, it could still be on par with MOO1 and MOO2. That problem is simple - the game has no soul.
I think the developers did not understand a lot of what made MOO1 and MOO2 great. It wasn't just the deep strategy and the amazing gameplay, it was the fact the game had a soul to it. It was the little things, like your researchers popping up and explaining what advances you've made. It was seeing your spies tell you what they stole. It was the fact that alien races told you why they were mad at you, not just that they were. It was watching your colony ship land on a planet and then naming it whatever you wanted to. It was controlling each of your ships in combat and doing everything you could to keep every little ship alive. For some reason, MOO3 felt the need to remove all that. Apparently what they meant by "Simulating an Empire" was "Drowning you in tons of information with no personal touches." Reading "Your researches have completed research on Biospheres" doesn't give the same feeling of accomplishment that someone coming up and telling you what they've created does. Reading what happened for a special event doesn't have the same impact or feel as being informed over GNN does. The game relies too much on its SitReps, and I think that it one of the game's key flaws. Maybe it's just my personal opinion, but it seems to me that without these things, it's not a Master of Orion game.
It's sad that this happened, really. Creating a sequel to MOO2 would not have been that hard. Take some of the good ideas from MOO3 (the plot, the harvesters, the increased role of the Orion senate), improve on some things of MOO2 (the micromanagement), add internet support, improve the graphics, and you have a grand game. Perhaps some people would have complained it was not a true sequel, but I think it would've been worth 50 dollars for those improvements.
For those of you that do enjoy MOO3, I envy you, I really do. I wish the game could have liven up to its predecessors, but in my mind, it failed. For those of you sticking with it, good luck, and I hope you find a trace of the soul of the series somewhere undernearth all the endless, bland, boring menus.
As a disclaimer, these are all just my opinions, and I am open to hearing other points of view regarding my ideas.
As a bit of background, I am a computer science graduate student at the University of Arizona, and a huge fan of both MOO1 and MOO2. This being said, I've followed MOO3 for awhile, even through all the recent bad reviews, convinced that anything Master of Orion based could not be that bad. It must just be that the reviewers weren't fans of that type of game. Today, after having read the entire manual and the ReadMe file, I fired up the game. It started out well enough. The intro was cool and set up the game well (although if you hadn't read the manual you'd probably be left scratching your head). All hyped up, ready to spend most of the day before class lost in a brand new Master of Orion universe, I started a new game.
Four hours later, I sat watching the uninstall program running, wondering what went wrong.
Now, I know many of you at this point are thinking "Well, he didn't give it a chance. The learning curve is usually 10 or 15 hours," In reply, I say "So what?". I do not pay 50 dollars for games in order to force myself to play them, hoping eventually that will magically become more fun. I have no problems playing a game for hours to get the hang of them, but it should at least be fun in the process. That's the point of the game, isn't it? Besides, I am firmly convinced that my two big problems with the game would not fade with time.
The first of these is the fact that the game just feels unprofessional. It seems to me like a bunch of people who did not know how to program or design software, but were fans of the first two games, got together and tried to throw as much together as possible. Having no experience with software design whatsoever, they apparently did not judge how much time adding each feature would take, and thus the game ended up as a mess. They've taken everything that was good and well designed about the interfaces of MOO1 and MOO2 and removed them. Instead, I now have to dig through 4 menus in order to access the build queue for a planet. In the past, it took 2. Why? Why did they make things more complicated? They broke two key rules: 1) if it ain't broke, don't fix it and more importantly 2) KISS (keep it simple, stupid). Playing a game should not give me a headache. Rather than follow the example of MOO2 (take the good parts of MOO1 and build upon them), they redid everything, but they redid it all badly. Take, for example, the diplomacy screen in MOO2 vs. MOO3. In MOO2, just from looking at the screen, you can see what treaties you have, what benefit you are receiving from them, how many spies you have in the empire, what those spies are doing, and the overall relationship between your empires. All of this on one screen. In MOO3, you have to click through various tabs and on each leader icon in order to see the same information. This is not an improvement, this is a de-evolution. Compare either MOO1 or MOO2's interface to MOO3's, and it's obvious which one is inferior. However, even all these flaws in presentation do not necessarrily mean the game is bad. While they make playing the game more of a chore, if it weren't for the second major problem, it could still be on par with MOO1 and MOO2. That problem is simple - the game has no soul.
I think the developers did not understand a lot of what made MOO1 and MOO2 great. It wasn't just the deep strategy and the amazing gameplay, it was the fact the game had a soul to it. It was the little things, like your researchers popping up and explaining what advances you've made. It was seeing your spies tell you what they stole. It was the fact that alien races told you why they were mad at you, not just that they were. It was watching your colony ship land on a planet and then naming it whatever you wanted to. It was controlling each of your ships in combat and doing everything you could to keep every little ship alive. For some reason, MOO3 felt the need to remove all that. Apparently what they meant by "Simulating an Empire" was "Drowning you in tons of information with no personal touches." Reading "Your researches have completed research on Biospheres" doesn't give the same feeling of accomplishment that someone coming up and telling you what they've created does. Reading what happened for a special event doesn't have the same impact or feel as being informed over GNN does. The game relies too much on its SitReps, and I think that it one of the game's key flaws. Maybe it's just my personal opinion, but it seems to me that without these things, it's not a Master of Orion game.
It's sad that this happened, really. Creating a sequel to MOO2 would not have been that hard. Take some of the good ideas from MOO3 (the plot, the harvesters, the increased role of the Orion senate), improve on some things of MOO2 (the micromanagement), add internet support, improve the graphics, and you have a grand game. Perhaps some people would have complained it was not a true sequel, but I think it would've been worth 50 dollars for those improvements.
For those of you that do enjoy MOO3, I envy you, I really do. I wish the game could have liven up to its predecessors, but in my mind, it failed. For those of you sticking with it, good luck, and I hope you find a trace of the soul of the series somewhere undernearth all the endless, bland, boring menus.
ACK!
I have one problem tho... wtf is wrong with the diplomacy ?? lol I have species calling me up tellin me what a backstabbing maniac I am and they will NEVER forgive me... like I killed all their newborn children or something lol but I was in a non-aggression treaty and piles of trade treaties with them for dozen turns. Also, I get a non-aggression and declaration of war offer in the same turn from the same civ O.o. Wars just seem to end magically and then they are re-declared... wierd stuff. the AI needs to tell u WHY they are upset... its just too vague right now and doesnt make sense most of the time.
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