Master of Orion 3 - What Went Wrong?

[MetalKing]

Silellak I completely agree with you. The time that was inserted into this game, the game should have been a stone cold classic. But what the f***.

I addition to what you said i noticed even more f***ed up things.

Why can't you come out of some menus? for expl. Foreign Matrix - from this screen you can't come out to galactic screen without switching menus(personel) and hit the close button. It sux.

Diplomacy on the other hand is something left to be desired. No race introduces itself anymore it's plainly among the news."We met a new race"THAT'S THAT?? MOO2 was better in these things. Another thing. I was playing with nommo and had an alliance with the humans. Together we were happilly attacking the klackons until we destroyed them. Then in a matter of turns the humans pronounced war on me!? I looked at the relations screen and i had a cassus belli +140 and that other thing +160 with the humans. Now how the f*** can this be possible.

Another thing tactical combat suxx, not to mention the ground combat. Now if anyone of you likes the ground assault screen by seeing it in MOO2 you're crazy!
A bunch of useless tactics, and that marine keeps saying the same things. I rather would not start with how much clicking is needed to get 6 transporters together. Awful.

Hmmm....Researcing and keeping up with the discoveries is another thing left to be desired.

I'm not here to entirely criticise the game. I'm a huge fan of the MOO series. I keep playing the game i want it to pull me in i want to like it! Though luck probably.The more i play more flaws i discover.

[The Rusty Gamer]

Ah well, the inevitable want list for the first patch thread is bound to begin shortly.

[Ellestar]

Why they did this so called 'interface'? Better to say 'interass'. This is simple.

1) Manual control, or micromanagement always more effective than any AI control. They wanted a game with 'fair' Difficulty settings - i.e. computer didn't get additional modifiers to research/production etc. compared to a player.
But computer can't do things as well as player. So, they effectively 'taken' away ability to micromanage your empire.
There are much signs of that politics - i spot them in my 1st turn. I can't find precise formulae (as in MoO2, SMAC etc.). In other Strategy games player also don't get full info about calculations, but at least some things are fairly obvious - then all 'free space' filled with food - city get +1 population - these are easy to calculate.
And what we see in MoO3? No info AT ALL!!! What all buildings do? How race modifiers change production? How much bonus to production rich planet gives? Tech tree?
I can't calculate effects of my actions - so i can't make choices! Tell me how a STRATEGIC game may be without CHOICES???
So, i see that designers wanted to make 'difficulty' to player this way - they are not giving info about how player's decisions affect game and make difficulties in micromanagement making worst interface ever.

2) Why they did it, you ask? This is also simple - they did game not for PowerPlay, but for casual gamers - so we see lot of pictures with no info (see at any screen - how much info may be there and how much is), you can make lot of actions without any sense (because there is no info) and spending too much time (interface) and this must be COOL for us. Yes! I think player must see at this pictures, press 'End of Turn' and set all on full auto - this is for what designers design this game. So, almost every player can win in this game.

So i don't start a full game before i can't find in Inet etc. how things in this game work - i want to play Strategy game, and not this piece of crap.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by Corentor
MOO3 did not go wrong.

The ideas of what the game was going to be were executed fairly well.

Just because it is not to *your* tastes does not mean the game sucks.

Just as the fanboys were wrong in trying to question the negative review's point of view, it is wrong to say that the game bad or that the developers went astray simply because you do not agree with the vision of the developers on what MOO3 should be.

The game seems to be 99% bug free and with the exception of bad documentation, there is little fault you can find within the game.

Now, I haven't the game, and based on what I have heard will certainly never buy it till it hits the bargin bin.

But this Corentor, seems to me the lowest standard to which a game could be judged.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by Ellestar
Why they did this so called 'interface'? Better to say 'interass'. This is simple.

1) Manual control, or micromanagement always more effective than any AI control. They wanted a game with 'fair' Difficulty settings - i.e. computer didn't get additional modifiers to research/production etc. compared to a player.
But computer can't do things as well as player. So, they effectively 'taken' away ability to micromanage your empire.
There are much signs of that politics - i spot them in my 1st turn. I can't find precise formulae (as in MoO2, SMAC etc.). In other Strategy games player also don't get full info about calculations, but at least some things are fairly obvious - then all 'free space' filled with food - city get +1 population - these are easy to calculate.
And what we see in MoO3? No info AT ALL!!! What all buildings do? How race modifiers change production? How much bonus to production rich planet gives? Tech tree?
I can't calculate effects of my actions - so i can't make choices! Tell me how a STRATEGIC game may be without CHOICES???
So, i see that designers wanted to make 'difficulty' to player this way - they are not giving info about how player's decisions affect game and make difficulties in micromanagement making worst interface ever.

2) Why they did it, you ask? This is also simple - they did game not for PowerPlay, but for casual gamers - so we see lot of pictures with no info (see at any screen - how much info may be there and how much is), you can make lot of actions without any sense (because there is no info) and spending too much time (interface) and this must be COOL for us. Yes! I think player must see at this pictures, press 'End of Turn' and set all on full auto - this is for what designers design this game. So, almost every player can win in this game.

So i don't start a full game before i can't find in Inet etc. how things in this game work - i want to play Strategy game, and not this piece of crap.

Thanks for saving me some money.

[Corentor]

Originally posted by jimmytrick Now, I haven't the game, and based on what I have heard will certainly never buy it till it hits the bargin bin.

But this Corentor, seems to me the lowest standard to which a game could be judged.

I see, so what you think MOO3 should be is what everyone thinks MOO3 should be and anyone who disagrees is a moron....

People are trying to judge the game based on whether they find it "fun" or not. What they don't understand is that different people find different things fun.

The developers are not mind readers. They cannot tell who will find what fun. What they can do is implement what they think is fun and what they think people will enjoy and then let people play out their vision.

Its just like art. Some people will enjoy the piece some will say "wtf?".

The "standard" I laid out is really the only standard that can measure a game concretely. Any evaluation beyond that falls into the scope of opinion, and everyone has their own.

[Yodasplat]

Originally posted by Corentor


I see, so what you think MOO3 should be is what everyone thinks MOO3 should be and anyone who disagrees is a moron....

People are trying to judge the game based on whether they find it "fun" or not. What they don't understand is that different people find different things fun.

The developers are not mind readers. They cannot tell who will find what fun. What they can do is implement what they think is fun and what they think people will enjoy and then let people play out their vision.

Its just like art. Some people will enjoy the piece some will say "wtf?".

The "standard" I laid out is really the only standard that can measure a game concretely. Any evaluation beyond that falls into the scope of opinion, and everyone has their own.

VERY well said! couldn't have said it better myself.

I actually think it's a great thing that there's people here that are complaining and that are posting their negative opinions about the game. If anything, the more opinions (negative or postive) are posted the more likely it is that a potential buyer will make and informed decision.

As for me: this is all I have been waiting for. Not disappointed in the least. True, there are a few things here and there that could be improved but they are minor compared to the scope of the game.

What went wrong with MOO3 for me? my wife will divorce me in a month, cause I won't get any sleep and any shred of social life I had went down the drain the moment I bought the game.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by booje
Hey Silellak I totally agree. I have many many years of playing both board and computer and I'm a software professional with a technical degree as well.

So? Is this supposed to make your opinion worth more than a janitor who has a PC and bought the game and enjoys it?

I loved Master of Magic, MOO1, MOO2 (not as well as MOO1 but pretty darn close) and I have to agree with the points you make about MOO3.

Now I've been getting flamed about "I need to do this" or "I need to do that" to make the MOO3 experience better. But, notwithstanding a learning curve, why should I adapt and bend over backwards (or forwards in this case) to learn to enjoy the game when I should just be having fun automatically.

Why should you learn to play a new game? Umm, because it *is* a new game. Did you expect the same interface on this game as Moo1/2? Sorry you actually have to *learn* to play a new game all over again, I guess you never like to learn anything new?

This being said, if the game isn't fun for you right out of the gate then return it, but why did or do you buy ANY new game if you never want to learn how to play it?

That makes no sense.

I'm certainly not saying it's easy these days what with the production values of Medieval Total War or the true honest depth of Europa Universalis 2. I'm sure everyone involved had the very best of intentions but it just seems like they shot for moon and really missed.

Nah, they just wanted something a little more complex and deep than Moo2 and in this case they suceeded. If people don't want to stick around and learn how to play to understand and have the fun of running the empire then that is the individual's loss. Oh and for the record, I am extremely lost in the game now, but like the extra management features that are available now compared to MOO2 so I'll stick it out.

Copied well, but not original and lacking soul.

You definitely didn't learn to play the game because there is much more to this than having one big ship to protect (Homeworld), there is an entire galaxy of planets to manage and run.

Maybe if you had stuck around you wouldn't be blaming the game for your not wanting to learn.

What I care about is gameplay more than anything else
and Silellak is right when he says this game has no soul.

Where's the love?

lol, the game has no soul? I guess you'd say someone was boring on a date because they didn't have sex with you in the first 5 minutes and wanted to get to know you better first? lol, life is full of learning opportunities, some like them, some don't, but just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's not fit, or is bad, for everyone.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by kalbear
The design doc for MoO3 declared it was to be an A+ title to sell 500K copies or more. That's a mainstream game if there ever was one.

Regardless of whether that was their intent, it sure as hell wasn't what they got. I can't imagine any casual gamers even remotely liking it.

Maybe the casual gamers won't buy the game with their pre-concieved ideas clouding the potential game like the people who wanted the game to be MOO2.5.

Don't dicount the "casual gamer" since they aren't all stupid nor have the impatience of a 2 year old.

[MetalKing]

Dear Corentor.

You missed the entire point of the matter. We judge this game by its predecesors.By what you wrote this game could be an arcade. IT COULD BE FUN!!

Speaking for myself i didn't say that anyone is a moron. I wrote down a few things that bother me and people can read it and god-forbid maybe they find those things annoying to.

Not to mention your relation to art. How about abstract art??How many people f***ing like that!?!? If the game was ment to be in your words abstract "art" well f*** 'em.

Bottom line is the game is not bad, but it's not a classic, it's not a game that would set standards for others to follow. Do you get my point.I was expecting this kind of game. At least by the time they had to make it...

You know I am really dissapointed at games(read sequels) that are coming out. HOMM4 came out. Everyone said it sucked but i defended it. I tried to find something that would be WOW...well it didn't happen. Now i agree it sux.

Civ3 came out, everyone said it sucked. I still defended the game and said it was awesome. But the first time that two archers defeated my tank civ3 never saw the light on my computer again.Plainly the kind of things that shouldn't happen in that kind of game. I did not complain about those kinds of things happening in original CIV1 but 12 or 13 years later!?!? come on.

Well MOO3 is the next and i assure you it is just an average game full of useless things that should be put aside and make the game less complex and more like it's predecesors.

That's it my emotional breakdown is over!

[H Tower]

are you done then? never coming back? or are you going to give QS a chance to patch some stuff first and then possibly rethink your opinion?

[AeternitasXIII]

So I've clocked up over 40 hours since Wednesday morning playing MOO3, finishing two normal difficulty games of 16 Empires on Huge Maps (1 3-Armed and 1 Cluster). Won both of them, first as Nommo through elimination victory, second as Cynoids through election to Senate Presidency. In general my view of this game is fair to poor. Its fairly easy once you figure out that half the gauges are worthless to fiddle with, and the other half only need to be fiddled with in the very beginning before being locked in.

Diplomacy is erratic. Long term allies around 100 or so turns after you've entered into a full alliance with them will mysteriously threaten you to "cease all actions", with no references to what actions they mean, before declaring war on you. Empires that begin to dislike you are virtually impossible to get back to positive relations, either with bribes, tribute, or Senate actions. Interaction with neutral or allied empires consist of accepting their proposal to improve economic/intelligence/research treaties every few turns, and military alliances seem to have zero effect other than to give your new allies permission to enter systems under your control and place colonies in uninhabited planets (colonies which soon become yours since the AI will spontaneously declare war on you later, and not bother to post a single unit of ground forces or bolster its system defenses before the war begins).

Despite the stage being set for some sort of complex interweave of internal political factions pestering you and planetary viceroys with dreams of your throne, there's absolutely zero indication that any sort of internal politics exist. Even with parlimentary or republican governments, the viceroys behave with few variations, and are simply faceless automatons balancing tax income with development costs on each colony. Every government type basically devolves into a choice of what bonuses or penalties you want applied to your economy, and any sort of politics don't exist.

Economics seems rather sound, with grants from Imperial coffers being dispersed to the 10 lowest ranked colonies in your empire each turn, space ports allowing trade between nearby systems, and the AI managing each planet fully capable of developing and managing them to full self-sufficiency. The only interaction I have with my planets by turn 200 is to clear the production queues of the endless stream of useless command centers/hackers/commandoes that the Viceroys build (despite having a trained army of battleoids deployed on every single planet I own, with enough left over in reserves to fill 6 titan-class troop carriers), or to lower the tax rate 2-3 percentage points to prevent my cities from going into revolt. The viceroy will of course fill the queue with those units again, and raise the taxes as well, forcing me to repeat this cycle ever 3-4 turns on every single planet I own. DEA development is easily left to the viceroys, with the only input from myself being the occassional removal of an extra mine to replace with an industry. Once you have empires of 50 or so planets, you'll probably stop even monitoring the DEA usage by viceroys.

Espionage is virtually worthless. Despite having a dozen spies (2 of each discipline) continually at home, enemy spies frequently nuke buildings, sow social discord, and assassinate any heroes I have. This was true as the Nommo, when my spying was ranked as average and my oppressometer set at 7 of 10 for the entire game, and as the Cynoid whom I modified to Dangerous at the beginning of the game and left their oppressometer at 6. My own spying missions on enemy empires were frequently screwed up before they started due to a bug that causes any spy caught trying to cross a border for insertion to go into a endless loop where he keeps inserting himself into the empire rather than completing a mission, forcing me to retire them and replace with a new spy. Only the technology stolen by my science spies reminded me there was some usefulness to the Espionage tab, since none of the other missions run by my spies seemed to have any effect on enemy empires.

Space combat, even with a dozen task forces of armada size on each side and a fairly rounded distribution of mission types, was easily over in a few minutes. The longest part was often the long, leisurely drift towards an enemy planet, or waiting in the center of the map for the enemy to drift towards you. Advanced weapons and other tech seem to offer few advantages, as Titan class vessels with several generations lead in the tech department could be overwhelmed by 3 or 4 light cruisers. Long range weapons often were only useful when a small task force of disposable recon vessels were sent out to the enemy and left to die so that my other task forces could see them despite having the most recent sensor techs available. Even then, long range task forces insisted on closing to point blank range every single time, even when all the ships in the force were gutted of short range weapons, and would often suffer casualties even though they would have been safe firing from outside the enemy's range. The graphics for space combat are essentially the sort of stuff you'd expect from a game circa 1995, with tiny pin-head sized polygonal smudges of green and brown representing capital ships, even at high levels of zooming in. Compared to the capital ships of games like Hegemonia or even the dated Imperium Galactica 2, the space combat graphics are incredibly weak. The upshot of this is I was able to install and play MOO3 on my Pentium 133 and its Rendition 2100-based graphics card, and despite some slow down at end of turn, and the need to turn off the music, the combat went rather well.

Ground combat is probably the only bright spot in the gameplay side of things, and even after invading dozens of planets it was still amusing to listen to the soldiers reporting news of the combat as waves of battleoids swept over planetary militias unchecked. I never had the chance to deploy nuclear/chemical/biological weapons, nor was I forced to consider my chosen tactics, since the AI never felt it necessary to place armies on its planets to oppose my advancing forces. Not once in either of my games did the AI decide to land troop transports on my controlled planets.

The arrival of heroes to my empire was a welcome sight at first, since they offered some mild boosts to spying and economics, but by midway through my first game I had stopped caring about them since enemy assassins never failed to kill them in 5-6 turns.

The tech tree has virtually no new conceptual additions to the tree in MOO2, the exception being a handful of economic and political techs that reduce the cost of your imperial bureaucracy. There seems to be no clear organization to the tree, with technologies we have today in our own modern society like ion engines being placed in trees long after futuristic advances like nanofactories and neutron blasters. By the end of 50 turns you'll probably have found a distribution of percetanges for research money that suits your race, lock them down to prevent the AI from fooling with them, turn off tech advance notification in your situation report, and never take notice of research again. Every 50 turns after that you might redesign your fleet to take into account advances (no point redesigning on a shorter time scale, since even with a fairly productive society you'll start finding your fleets aren't even constructed by the time they're two generations of tech obsolete). All the other tech advances are automatically instituted by the planetary viceroys, or other AI, and you'll likely never even realize they've occured unless you take an occassional peak at the research tab.

I've played MOO2 and MOO1 extensively in the past, but came into MOO3 with expectations that it might be a simulator of how to rule a civilization. The promise of independent viceroys and a wide range of government, economic and espionage options set in the MOO universe was very strong. Unfortunately it seems the developers passed up every chance to turn MOO3 into a truly evolutionary experience from MOO2, and instead left us with a mess of inefficient tabs and bland graphics that are somewhere between MOO1 and MOO2 in terms of quality and presentation (except of course the beautifully rendered ambassadors for the various races), with game play that is void of any new features from MOO2, and has managed to water down quite a few that needed no change.

[wilebill]

Hmmm. My MOO3 just arrived from Amazon and is still in the box. Think I will send it back and wait for Galciv instead.

[ewanad]

AeternitasXIII, I hear you man. I share your pain. I think I will return this game and get Galciv or wait for Homeworld 2

[vmxa1]

AeternitasXIII I have not played enough to form options yet, but I highly suspect that you are correct.
I would fine the spy stuff to be a real show stopper.
So far I have found no real reason for me to do anything, but hit the turn toggle. Once I have gone through and seen it to the end, I am not sure I will have a reason to start over. At least in SEIV you are able to have a real impact.