Initial disappointment leads to longterm ectasy?

[The Rusty Gamer]

All I can do is point you to this thread here.

In a nutshell, it says don't judge the game too quickly. Initial disappointment turned into an addictive game through persistence. It grows on you.

I remember being initially disappointed in Alpha Centauri, thinking it was just a Civ II ripoff in drag. I left it for a while, came back to it, and suddenly the game just "took off".

[MetalKing]

I hope you're righ rusty i really do!

[msavage]

I think this could be true. I haven't played it yet, on my primary system it won't run, but I think I can fix that soon as I get home from work. I then will throw myself at this game and see for myself.

Those innitial complaints in all the forums got me scared a little, but I am confident I will like the game. Maybe a patch or two will make it even better.

It has potential, all you have to do is get it out.

[The Mad Monk]

I understand there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth WRT the UI.

[Jamski]

A lot of people didn't know what the game was like before they bought it. They were "unpleasantly surprised", as they say. Those who have been with MoO3 since the Delphi days have got almost exactly what they asked for : more detail and better automation.

-Jam

[darcy]

I have never played a single game which first disappointed me, but excited me later. If it's not love at first sight, the game can at best be average.

This is completely unrelated to this often quoted "complexity" and "learning cliff". I don't need to understand every little gameplay mechanism to judge if I like it. If I realize the game has no soul, I'm not even going to read its manual.

[Alex]

Originally posted by darcy
I have never played a single game which first disappointed me, but excited me later. If it's not love at first sight, the game can at best be average.

This is completely unrelated to this often quoted "complexity" and "learning cliff". I don't need to understand every little gameplay mechanism to judge if I like it. If I realize the game has no soul, I'm not even going to read its manual.

Actually you made a good point. Most of the time I feel like you. If I buy a game, and no matter if that game is extremely complex or easy and simple, what grabs me in the end is the soul of the game... And this doesn't necessarily equals to "fun".

[General Ludd]

I feel the same way playing MOO3 as when I first started playing EU. "huh. well... huh." pretty much desribes what goes through my mind - I don't know what to think, and I'm taking alot of time to fully understand it and get accustomed to the new concepts and game mechanics. But the more I play it, the more I begin to appretiate it - just like how it happened with EU, which is now my most favorite of games.

When I first started playing civ3, I was very excited and got straight into the game and enjoyed playing it from the start... but after 3 days I realised that it had nothing new and lacked any amount of depth to make it interesting. Haven't played it since.



That post you link to has some very good advice.
A saying I've always liked is "play with the game, not against it" don't go into games with expectations of what you want it to be, and try to force it into those views - go into it with an open mind and learn and adapt to the new game, and take it for what it is. If you try to force a game into what you want it to be instead of playing it the way it really is, you'll always be disapointed. (except, maybe, for those clones...)

[kalbear]

There wasn't much of a learning curve for me, but that's not surprising given the amount of info I looked at before playing.

I like the UI. There are some things I don't like about it, but there are some things I love about it.

What I don't like is the lack of challenge. At this point, it feels much more like a game of SimCity than MoO2. That isn't a bad thing - it's a lot of fun to have a hands off sim like feel to the game, and to take control only when I absolutely have to - usually on my main industry planets. Not having to worry about colonization is a nice thing, for instance - in the mid game at least. But the enemy AI..is just sad. At least so far. There are some bugs that let you exploit this weakness - things like the PD not firing on missiles, and missiles being brutal in terms of damage relative to LR ships. But even without them, the AI seems to want to have it's neck crushed by you. It goes out of it's way to piss you off without doing anything particularly effective - aside from spying. The computer uses spies much better than I do, but it can't make or use ships to save it's life.

And that's bothersome to me. Senate victories, if I start in the senate, are almost an afterthought. As an example, last night I played a game as my "nerd bugs" -tachidi modified to do research well, along with great bonuses in bioharvesting and the standard 'we rule' building bonuses.

At the end of the game - turn 150ish - I had 1500 votes. The next person after the NOs were, well, silicoids - with 84 pop.

1500 to 84? This is with grendahls out there as well. The hell? Before I stomped out the Eoladi, I had about 15 planets in a nice chunk of the galaxy, all of which could have been contested.

That really is the one failing, right there. If they fix the AI and make it more challenging - or if we do it - the game has a lot of potential to be fun. If not, well, it'll be something different; a good game for MP, a good 'sim' game, but not a lot else.

[Oddible]

Cool thing about MOO3 is that the learning curve is very scaleable. If you just launch into the game and hit end turn over and over and over again - you end up with ships being build, infrastructure - so then you got this ship and its just sitting there in the reserve. First learning leap - must build task force. Ok, so now sail out and explore. Soon more and more events are forced upon you and you have to learn how to deal with them as they come.

Took me a while to get a hang of all the places to manipulate production and build queues and agendas but just hitting end turn over and over and over again I had plenty of opportunty to learn - very fun learning process. Early on I wanted to know how everything works and was a bit frustrated with the game's manual and live help. Then I just let it go and started ending turns. Now I'm getting the hang of it just throuh the process of events being forced on me. And its getting more fun as it goes on...

Fully in agreement with this thread title.

[Oddible]

As for Osweld's comment on CivIII - if you only played a little and ditched it, you are sadly missing out. CivIII brought so much to the plate and so significantly increased AI depth that it is the subtlety more than anything that makes that game great - subtly being one of those things you don't notice in one game (nor often even in 10 games). Sounds like your expectations killed that game for you and never let you find the sweetness in the details.

[Doomz02]

I have just recently got the game. And to simply tell it straight out - The game is incredibly complex! Compared to Moo2.

I dove straight in. I wasn't entirely impressed with the graphics at all. The graphics are moo2 graphics with enhancements.

There is advice which is tremendously helpful but I get lost quickly.

I think things will pick up in a couple days after gettin used to the new interface.

The graphics need to beable to be switched to higher resolutions though.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Oddible
CivIII brought so much to the plate and so significantly increased AI depth

Yeah, a simplistic culture system and a powergaming ***** of an AI. No thanks.



If my expectations killed it, it's because I was expecting civ3. Even as a clone it failed, civ2 was a much better game in my opinion.

I like to take an open aproach to games, but there is such thing as a crapy game.