Words from the past...

[ZargonX]

I was just surfing around today, and I happened to come across this article from a few years back. In light of recent discussions, it's quite interesting to read what was said then and what's being said now...

http://www.gamespy.com/editorials/april01/interface/index3.shtm

[Ianpolaris]

ZargonX,

The review was right....Moo2's interface wasn't as good as it could have been. However, if you read the rest of that article, he goes on to say that the game was fun anyway and the game-play and the fact there were multiple ways to get to the same screen quickly made it worth the learning curve.

Given that the interface was a weakness in Moo2, why WHY did the QS developers make it even worse?! Please: I want an answer to that.

Moo3 plays like a bastard combination of Moo and Moo2 with all the good stuff either nerfed or removed and all the irritating stuff either retained or even featured. Is it any wonder then why this game is getting such horrid reviews?

-Polaris

[ZargonX]

Oh, I'm quite aware of what the review said. I wasn't posting this as a pro or anti Moo3 stance, but simply as a flashback to years gone by. I think it is far to early to tell whether Moo3 is going to grow on people, have it's problems patched up, etc. But, then, as now, people took issue with many of the same things right off the bat.

[ChaotikVisions]

Hmm, quite amusing. Just shows how much people hate change. Oh and on the reviews.

http://www.gametab.com/pc/master.of.orion.3/1047/ 4 good reviews, 4 mediocore, 2 bad(the QuarterToThree review isn't listed). And the countless mixed player reviews as well.

[Ianpolaris]

ChaotikVisions,

I don't hate change. In fact I find change to be good and refreshing. Having said that (and I think my scientific training is coming into the fore here), I am a conservative thinker. What that means in terms of game-play is this:

If a part of a game works well, then change is sparingly if at all. If a part of the game does not work, then make it better....and test your changes with a large segment of the gaming population (which is why I find the small number of BTs and lack of demo to be inexusable....but in hindsight understandable).

This is not quite the same of 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' but that old quip has a lot going for it.

My best guess is this: The game was killed by 'Feeping Creaturism' and the Devs couldn't bring themselves to cut out all of their neat features....and so gutted the game instead to make the deadline.

If that sounds harsh (and it is), then let me ask you this:

How else could a game that had a solid game to build on (Moo II) and a solid fan base go two years over-budget in time and still feel unfinished?

-Polaris

[vee4473]

One of his biggest complaints was the color/appearance of the targetting reticle over a ship...in order to determine if you wanted to attack or scan, and having to push a separate scan button to do so.

Another was that some buttons didn't "look" like buttons and that buttons changed locations on certain screens.

It seems like many MOO3 players would give their right leg to have these things be the biggest gripe about MOO3.

[uXs]

That article sucked. Starcraft genre-defining... no way. Best selling, yes. Genre-defining, NO.

To start, the article said that Starcraft was the first RTS you could play on the internet. That statement is so completely rediculous that it casts serious doubts on the validity of the rest of the article.

SC is a very poor choice for talking about interfaces as well. The limited build queues, the limited amount of units in selections, the fixed resolution, ... If he wanted to take a good example of interfaces, he should've picked Total Annihilation. It was earlier than SC, and its interface is, after all these years, still unsurpassed. And while it was released before SC, it even had multiplayer ! Imagine that...

I can accept that people played and even enjoyed Starcraft (though not understand it...), but I can't accept people rewriting history like this.

If he had juist picked SC because it was most widely known, that would've been okay with me. It would still have made me mad, but I wouldn't have reacted. But the stupid claims about SC being genre-defining and stupid claims like that made it too much for me.

[CharlesBHoff]

I love MOO3 . So it have bug can anyone name any games that was release on the PC in the last two year that didnot have any bugs that have to be patch.