It seems that posting here is waste of time.
First time I made a bug and impressions report. 2nd time I made a big post regarding a mod I made for GC2 and ideas that they could use perhaps in GC3. Both times no one from Stardock replied and I don't expect they will.
Surely they can't answer all posts but what's the purpose of posting something if they don't care? It's their own game they asked for feedback.Especially for 2nd post it took some time to write it and I feel I wasted my time. It's been only a few days but I don't expect they will answer just like the other post which now is weeks old.
So either they are too busy working or don't care to read the forums or both. I have been posting here since GC2 but I won't make any new posts since it's waste of time.
And now about GC3 I have to say like others said and I have been saying since GC2 there are things, concepts and game designs that were outdated back in GC2 and they are outdated even more in GC3. I like GC2 and I would like to see the final version of GC3 but in 2014 a 64bit game should be a lot more than an upgraded GC2. Surely at first look the picture seems very cool better graphics but.. not so much. I have seen older games with more realistic space, more realistic planets and more realistic ideas for colonies, terraforming, tactical combat etc.
It's a big strategy game and it should be balanced but this old recipe of sectors both in space and even worse in planets who are actually small cities on a 2D map it's a more like a '90s game dressed with some nice graphics but even them they can't compete with today's standards.
To me it seems Stardock used they same recipe and they didn't want to make big changes perhaps didn't want to risk it or just they had no better ideas?
Space: Still 2D? Sword of Stars a very simple tablet game and was 3D surely many more games out there I dont remember now. Graphics welll better than GC2 for sure but there are countless examples of older games with much nicer and realistic space.
Sectors: Hexes and now ships travel in zizag motion making they game looks very unrealistic and we go back to 1985 perhaps?
Planets: You can build just a few buildings on each planet and just 1 in a whole sector where normally 2-3 cities would fit. Terraformation is done only for some extra sectors not the whole planet. Best terraformation was in the very old and best strategy game of all time Master of Orion 2. Terraforming the whole planet and see it to change from a barren world to an earthlike one. It was nice and rewarding. When you play strategy games you don't care only about tacticts, and numbers you want to do some great things too! You want to build create things, you colonize a planet and slowly you change it becomes an other different world with cities, it changes from the barren rock it was to a beautiful paradise for your citizens. Not just sector terraforming.Where you build buildings in sectors why not build a city where you expand over the time and as the population increases more cities appear even if you have no control on them they will give you bonuses in production, food etc.
Solar Systems: They are still static instead planets orbititing their stars and planets are still big enough to be visible, way bigger than reality. But there are ways to have a live solar system and choosing their planets or moons to colonize. Click the star and zoom in to see the system, see the planets in slow orbit and select the one you want. Still limited on 5 planets? No moons. In Endless Space a game that was released few yrs ago moons were not directly colonizable with ships but through your colony as an expansion sometimes containing goodies just like planets. eg Ancient Ruins.
Tactical Combat: I have to refer again to MOO2 simply because it's TC was very simple using turns and move-attack-defend your ships and it's what exactly GC needs rather watching some spaceships moving in a funny way by themselves and having no control of it. Now I haven't see yet what TC will be in GC3 but if it's like in GC2 it will be another dissapointment.
Tech Ages: New in GC the tech ages prevent you from researching what you want. Really bad idea. Each player has a different strategy on the technologies he wants to research first. Either drop tech ages or mod for them will become very popular.
This was my last post in the forums just because I feel Stardock is not here to comment and the game is stuck in the past there is no new ideas nothing new to expect. I'm sure it will be a great game and looking forward to play it in it's final version but not so much as GC2 since it feels the same and some brand new ideas are needed, perhaps someone else will do it..
Almost every point you bring up has been discussed in the streams. Nearly 2/3rds of your post has been beat to death either here or on the Steam forums, notably the idiocy of Tactical Combat, The Zig Zag issue, the Static Solar systems (three streams talked about this issue and why we cannot have 'moving systems'), Terra forming which is broken into techs by specific races. Any of course your dislike of the Tech Ages, which of course are just another way to gate you from bee lining specific techs, every game did it, Ages were done to help the AI rather than give you an advantage.
Oh I forgot, 3d space. No thanks, it cannot be done (effectively) and still be fun. Go back to SotS which has a HOST of other issues but does have some 3D.
Again nearly ALL of your post have been beat to death over the last 6 months. Go look at the streams and search each topic and you can find your answers. There is a reason the game looks and feels the way it does. It is the direct predecessor to GC II, that formula worked and it worked well.
I know it been discussed but I wrote one last time just because I don't agree with old recipe is good keep it no matter what. Things changes, computers are more powerful and there have been many games old and new with better ideas.
What I'm simply saying is staying the same it won't work forever. At least for me I'm not so excited about GC anymore like I was in the past. So many others will agree.
Not replying doesn't mean we aren't reading. But while we appreciate feedback, bear in mind that the game's core feature set is not going to be changing at this point.
There are a number of 4x games out there, and they're all different. Tactical combat, 3D maps, etc., are not 'modern' features; they just aren't intended features of the GalCiv series (of which this is actually the fifth game). 3D maps for instance were seen in other games at least as early as 1995, a year after the first GalCiv game.
I believe they read the forums (as Kryo already posted) and act on some of the things mentioned far more then say Firaxis or any other gaming company out there. Simply because they don't respond to your post directly or your direct opinions doesn't mean anything at all. Stardock is a good company it's not a huge company making millions that they can just throw at there projects. But the company is growing and that's a good sign that they're doing something right.
As for your opinions of GC3, i think we've discussed some of these in other threads and i agree with you on many of the items mentioned. But honestly if your just going to throw up your arms grab you ball and go home... Then you might want to consider the fact that maybe GC isn't your kind of game anymore.
Despite my posts i still see a lot of value in the game, i mean they have some changes that i personally would like to see of course i think we all have something that we'd like changed, and i believe that stardock will make some of those changes. It's just a something that we all need to keep in mind is that it's in beta and half the features aren't in it yet. Now will stardock deliver on all the promised features? who the heck knows. i hope they do, but it's entirely up to them.
Yes the game still feels to much like GC2 for me also, but looking at what GC3 is in it's current state shows that it _MIGHT_ feel that way because all the GC3 improvements and new features aren't really in GC3 yet. (aside from graphical changes and orbital shipyards). The UI is a huge improvement over GC2 but still feels outdated and old. Beyond that i can't say a lot about it.
Yeah, but my ideas are so good I need official recognition for them.
I understand the desire for better graphics, TC, 3D, and so on. I just don't care about those things. So I suppose I'm more of Stardock's target audience.
Just try to remember that they are asking for feedback so they can make the game they are making as good as it can be. They are not making the game you want them to make. Every individual is going to have things about this game they would have done differently, and your individual preferences are not necessarily good or practical for this game. I'm not saying don't express your opinions or ideas, just don't expect that they will take or even agree with all or even any of your suggestions. No one is going to be completely happy. Instead of trying to get them to make a different game, try to understand the game they are making and help it reach its potential.
Also, there are very few developers with a more community responsive team than this one. Everyone wants their own posts/ideas validated by an official Stardock post, but it's usually more productive for them to let the community hash it out between ourselves. Get over yourself.
I address this here - https://forums.galciv3.com/457443/page/1/
Yup for alot of this, Someone wise told me that SD dosnt like to mess with our conversations and likes to let things develop naturally though and ive come to accept that.
I have a feeling some one will make a TC modd at some point... but its been said its will be some where in between?...
SD has heard concerns about colonization and will likely do something about the blandness of the planet screen. They aren't dumb, just quite
idrfk about 3D
also a more charismatic presentaion would have helped you.
DARCA
Change is not always good, as a fine example look at MOO3:
MOO3 was a radical departure from MOO2 on paper it had lots of great and exciting ideas that sounded good on paper. Put when it came out it was awful not 10% as good as MOO2.
The it's a modern game therefore your space map must be 3D is a nonsense, 2D makes far more sense in turns of usability for this type of game.
As for tactical combat, turn based combat in MOO2 was fun but distinctly non-epic even if you had a fleet of death stars it didn't feel epic. I'd rather watch my ships in epic combat following tactics and fleet roles I assigned before hand than have turn based or real time tactical combat that didn't feel epic.
You obviously have strong opinions OP and want Stardock to reconsider designing the whole game around your preferences but the basic features are as they say set the star map is 2D and tactical turn based space combat is out. If that turns you off the game it's too bad.
Don't get me wrong there are things I'd like to see changed that have been left alone like more visual engagaement with the race you are playing and more support for custom race visuals but they have made changes in many places ultimatley though it's obviously a descendent of GC2 but I don't see what is wrong with that.
Oh yeah, he did say he wanted 3D and turn based combat
That's such a waste.
Ascendency had 3D turn based combat, it was fun at first but got old since you had a few standard tactics you always used and again it lacked a sense of epic scale since only small numbers of ships where involved.
Imagine tactical combat with 60 ships per side of varying sizes. each turn could take an hour or more.
As for RTS style comabt in a turn based stratergy game it would be jarring and out of place.
I agreed with you up to this point, in this game sure it wouldn't fit right now and would take a lot of design and development to it make work correctly and enjoyable. However... Total War series games have always been one of my favorite and guess what? It works really well when done right.
The Stardock folk are pretty good about responding to constructive feedback. This feedback is just not that constructive. It is abundantly clear that they aren't going to add features which completely redefine what the game is at this point in the development. It would take YEARS of development time to implement the stuff you want, which obviously isn't happening at this point.
Your main complaint is basically that the vision for GCIII doesn't match up with Stardock's vision for GCIII. No offense, but thats something that you just have to let go. You aren't ever going to talk a company into completely changing their vision for a game at this point in the dev cycle. It can be worth providing constructive feedback about individual features that could potentially be changed, but you can't ask to have the whole game changed like that. You may need to just move on to a different game that better matches your vision.
The original Star Control had a 3D map and I remember playing that on my Amiga back in like 1991-92.
That is an inexact parallel. In a ship game each element is moving individually, while in Total War each entity although animated separately, follow a grouping. Where you can only have 20 groups total. Hence, what we have in that game is a game where you control 20 objects.
The other thing with Total War series is that it only really operates on 2D and not 3D. The terrain and models look 3D, but there is nothing flying overhead to take advantage of the Z space as it were. This can be done completely 2D and if you really like video games from the old days, I recommend you take a look at Sword of the Samurai from Micro Prose. You will see basically all of Shogun total war in that game modeled with terrain and everything in a 2D fashion. All that total war did in that aspect was make the game pretty with 3D graphics. Mind you they did add much needed UI improvements along the way and have developed a great game beyond their predecessor, but it took awhile to get to that stage.
Check out the oxide engine and look at their preview of a space battle. That is what it would look like and what I want to see, but it is not going to work for Gal Civ 3, due to the pacing of the game. But maybe they will give us that kind of cinematic experience (albeit extremely low density on ships)
Yea turn based would be really out of place,glad SD has the quick and easy fleet roles. Its not full TC but hey I'll live.
Have you played Gratutious space battles?
I did say 'at least'
It's easy to call something outdated and leave it at that
it's much harder to point to another 4X game that gets it right. "today's standards" are half-assed games like civilization 5 that are more like a simulation of empire than a strategy game that is interesting to play for people who know what they're doing
you mention that other games have 'better ideas'.
how many of them are intuitive and easy for the player to start making informed strategic decisions? how many of them are accompanied by a UI and AI that can play the game well? how many of those ideas translate to a good multiplayer experience?
if those aren't happening, then the so-called strategy game doesn't actually have any strategy in it
even if they had the budget for modern visuals (they don't. no small 4X developer does), that's usually not what helps strategy games. it increases the clutter on the screen and takes away from the player's ability to solve problems and see what's going on.
Well yeah, I was just supporting your point!
But even then I found the 3D map to be unnecessarily confusing. It's all for fun anyway, so I'd much rather have a 2D map that's easier to navigate.
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