This is a rant. Been with you since beta 1 offering feedback. You released with a bunch of missing gameplay features and have been playing catchup. You are catching up, I will give you that. But you are catching up to pre-release promises. Still no star base governors. Still requesting the most expensive constructor. Still no invasion visualization. Meanwhile you are working hard on DLC and expansions, i.e. the cha-ching, while neglecting some core UI issues.
For example:
Why can we not change focus on the Colonies grid like we could in GalCiv 2? Why can't we do it from the planet list on the main screen, for that matter?
Why are there no sorts and filters in the shipyard? Why is there no multi-select for the obsoleting mechanic?
What happened with the ship designer overhaul?
Why does it take 7 clicks to set a new rally point for a shipyard?
Why can't we declutter the main screen, with all the clouds and resources and starbases that turn into a jumble of icons?
Why do I have to change the govern settings to meet my preference for EVERY planet I colonize or conquer? Why no global setting?
Why do I have to "manage" a planet just to see how close it is to population cap?
Why can't I see which production bonuses are at the tile, planet, race, or galaxy level?
Why can't I see if I'm about to get a mutually exclusive tech in the trade window, which would prevent me from researching one of the alternatives?
How am I supposed to know that the "+1 food" tech aplies to each planet, not each farm?
How am I supposed to know Precursor Nanites is a civilization-wide bonus, not just a planet bonus?
These are just a few of the UI weaknesses that make the game tedious. The only reason there are as many people playing this game as there are is that they've resigned to just dealing with it in hopes that it will get better. I'm tired of waiting patiently.
I strongly recommend a complete overhaul of the game UI. Get some experts in there, take the time, spend the money, and make it happen. Every window, list, button, action, tooltip, no sacred cows, use a hatchet if you have to. The longer you put this off, the more you are going to drive players away. As for me, you have the next expansion and two post-expansion patches to make this happen. After that, I'm out.
Don't kid yourself; it was already an excellent game way back in beta. That has never been an issue in my mind.
a small thing can kill a game dead, but nothing like that in Galciv3, overall i love the game.
An example of a small thing that killed a game dead for me.... civ5, the two unit tile limit, ok, that completely destroyed the game for me, played it once, that was that. Doesn't matter how much hard work went into the rest of the game if one small thing can ruin it. And the funny thing is, it is not even a mistake or a shortcoming, most people like the idea!
So i guess the point is, if you find things that in your personal opinion ruin the game, then all the effort that goes into that game is not really going to be worth anything too you, just the same as civ5 is not worth anything to me, because i cannot benefit from my purchase, so of course i have no reason to appreciate the efforts that went into making it.
I like the game. Not sure if it is better than two though.
Frogboy, I wasn't shitting on you when I stated that I paid 100 bucks to effectively be a beta tester. Sit down this weekend and play a game or two and you'll see what I mean and what others mean in these threads. There's too many clicks required in the UI to do basic things. Again I will stress hotkeys for basic things. Lets say I want to build a factory or equiv. building. I click in the tile with my mouse and then hit the hotkey and done. Easier than now. If I want to buy it, I can click a 2nd hotkey. For those who can't or don't remember the hot key do it the current way.
Yeah, the Precursor DLC put me into rant mode. The anomalies are really too good. (Halve the bonuses). When I find a Precursor planet that doesn't require extreme colonization or worse yet atmospheric cleansing (A tech that needs to be available in the 2nd age like ec.) I usually have to fill half of it with farms. Lets reduce or lose some of those population oriented penalties.
Seriously, play this game vs the current DLC and you'll say,"OMG I have no more monetary worries now that I am grabbing these precursor anomalies....ooo..nice to have three +50% production ones for a total of +150%". "Hmm....even though I am playing vs many Genius AI's and they have good fleets, they aren't competing in a race for these anomalies".
Yeah, it did take a while (years) to make GC2 rock and I read some rants as well in old forums. I want to be able to rate this game as highly as GC2 but there's a long way to go,
One major thing to criticize. Where is the strategy forum? Where are the many strategy posts one would expect here? It would be nice to see strategy write ups of how to play each of the 9 races currently in the game.
Seriously, a newb won't find it easy to learn to play this game unless he spends lots of time on You Tube and watches the right dudes play. Some (much) of this needs to be here.
Oh and would I pay the 100 bucks to be a founder again right now? "Honestly, yes." But a couple weeks ago, I'd have said, "OMG YES!!".
I remain hopeful of a game better than GC2. Using better computer techs and drawing upon the many experiences of more 4x games.
neilkaz, this only addresses your Precursor anomaly concern, but I think you might be happy to know that Paul specifically mentioned in the most recent dev stream that the power and abundance of those will need to be toned way down. Expect a patch on that soon.
Is mormegil Pauls's alias? I didn't want to have a go at Paul though his blase, laid back responses in stream can be frustrating. I've no idea if he has a choice on what parts of the game he gets to work on or not.
There are ways Stardock could be more transparent with this. Do a poll with areas of the game that you, Stardock are proposing to focus on e.g. UI, AI, Diplomacy, Balance, DLC and let the community vote on what they want. I think Amplitude has done similar previously. Once a topic has been picked perhaps a another poll could narrow it down more. Then perhaps the below quote would happen less...
the community would then know if it's just a few vocal lone voices with supposedly bad attitudes asking for those improvements if they could see percentages from a poll, or someone trying to deflect criticism.
In short: I agree with Eviator, the UI stuff should be addressed faster imo
Great, so we can expect to see improvements by the next patch? Perhaps the ones mentioned by Eviator and the stream, and the most frequently asked for on the forums?
It's pretty normal for 4X games to take time and an expansion or two to reach their potential but in Gal Civ 3's case the paid for beta really clouded the waters imo. I think it's not clear what impact feedback from beta testers had as many of the suggested improvements haven't made it into the game I think they have every right to be frustrated at the progress of the game so far. The free support thing... I would never buy a 4X game if the company weren't going to patch and even add to it post release. Nothing wrong with being proud of your game but the fact that you call Gal Civ 3 excellent when it has a a user rating of 76% there's a disconnect there might not be time yet to pat yourselves on the back.
I'd love to work on this game I feel it has so much missed potential. If I felt Galactic Civilizations 3 was terrible and beyond redemption I certainly wouldn't be posting here still or occasionally playing it to see what difference the patches have made, but it's not as good as I was expecting. I thought it would be a lot more polished product by now and it's clear that others feel the same.
Mormegil is Paul's forum handle.
In terms of updates, it's the "OH? Will we have it by the next patch?" sort of thing that makes me irritated. No. Of course you won't. The next update is already well underway. The things we're talking about will get filtered into future updates.
Every GalCiv game, since the original OS/2 version back in 1992, had a paid beta.
And this thread? It has happened on each game release since 1992. It will happen again and again and again.
The fact that every single game goes through the same process doesn't make the feedback or complaints any less legitimate.
Also, if you want to use Steam user reviews as your guide, GalCiv II's Stema user review is only 73%. So I guess by that definition, GalCiv III is better than GalCiv II ultimate. Right?
Probably the vast majority of requests in this thread in the recent stream and on the forums, especially concerning UI have been asked for frequently and previous to 1.5 and a lot of them well back into the early betas. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard but possibly time consuming to give numerous examples and dig up previous posts by numerous people.
e.g. Why are there no sorts and filters in the shipyard/ship designer?
Why are there no separate hotkeys for e.g. ships/planets/starbases etc
This is really basic stuff (am I wrong?) that we shouldn't have to ask for every patch and should have really been in the release version or fixed straight away. You say some people have an attitude perhaps referring to me, I think you need to start listening to feedback stop being irritated and actually realize that some perhaps a lot of the criticism on here is merited. Believe it or not I hate complaining, I actually really don't want to be on bad terms with you, hell I'd seriously love to work for Stardock.
You've got the makings of a good perhaps very good game but it utterly puzzles and frustrates me why certain things have taken priority over implementing basic features properly, I just don't get it???
Eviator was spot on with this...
Or me, apparently. I love how eviator can make a post saying the UI is crap, SD are ignoring problems so they can milk more money from DLC, and that he's sick of this and will walk if it's not sorted out PDQ, and Frogboy 'loves' that, but I have an attitude problem and should piss off and go find another game because 90% of my posts are well-reasoned discussions of balance issues and list various options that could be used to fix 'em with half an hour of minor xml tweaks.
I think Froggy may be feeling a little defensive since he's got you tearing away at him in one thread and me doing so in another, which is a hell of a thing to wake up to a week before Christmas. We still love you and GC3, Froggy Just remember that it's because we love it that we want to see it the best it can be, and yeah, that makes us fairly passionate about this stuff. But we all have the same end goal here, and our critiques are always based on genuine flaws in the game, not slagging it off. I write a mod for your game. Macsen does LPs of it. These are not the actions of people who hate it and should go away and find something else to play.
I just need mass delete ship components.
Yeah, I probably deserved more push-back than I got. I could have used a more productive tone. A personality flaw I'm continually trying to improve. That said, I am serious about leaving this game if the UI is not significantly improved in the timeline given. Got better things to do. Not that one player will be a huge upset for the game. I'd like to avoid that because I want to have fun playing this game.
I don't like singling people out, but if I were to guess I'd say reply #20 and #21 got Frogboy fired up. They seem almost like personal attacks on the competency of the GalCiv3 team. Brad is the boss and the fearless leader, and good leaders defend their followers.
Or the presence of the ever-awful 'the community are beta testers' line, which crops up so much on every forum for every game that it should probably have it's own version of Godwin's Law by now.
Another Stardock/Frogboy puzzler going on there some kind of divide and conquer strategy perhaps, who knows?
The Armageddon thread? Read a bit of it didn't realize you were on the attitude list as well Speaking of Armageddon if us three can get another disgruntled GC3 fan here we could form the four horseman might really irritate Brad though, or better yet get through to him.
Actually got a new Let's Play for GC3 due out probably tomorrow, I've even started to tinker with the xml files myself made a few changes for the LP. I'm a long way away from making proper mods though.
Yeah I didn't really mean to have a go at Paul he seems a good guy, who's invaluable to Stardock. I've no idea if the flaws/issues that are repeatedly being brought up are anything to do with Paul's decision making. I thought the termite analogy was a good one personally but oh well.
Yeah, I probably deserved more push-back than I got. I could have used a more productive tone. A personality flaw I'm continually trying to improve. That said, I am serious about leaving this game if the UI is not significantly improved in the timeline given. Got better things to do. Not that one player will be a huge upset for the game. I'd like to avoid that because I want to have fun playing this game.I don't like singling people out, but if I were to guess I'd say reply #20 and #21 got Frogboy fired up. They seem almost like personal attacks on the competency of the GalCiv3 team. Brad is the boss and the fearless leader, and good leaders defend their followers.
So really it is not about it being a bad game, it is about 'time'?
Time which can be very difficult to get much of it for a whole bunch of people, so time is a precious thing to waste fiddling about with unnecessary inefficiencies in the UI?
Yeah, I've never considered this a bad game. The gameplay uses a good recipe. Thinking back to all my negative posts, nearly all are UI gripes, not so much gameplay. Like, if I'm playing a game and I'm spending 75% of my time moving my mouse around the screen because the buttons and actions are inconveniently placed and the info I need is in tooltips all over the place instead of readily available on the screen, and I have to manually do a bunch of obvious stuff over and over because the game doesn't support more automation. That means I'm spending only 25% of the time playing the game. Having logged hundreds of hours playing the game since beta, it has been wearing on me.
And there seems to be a huge difference between me and Stardock about micro and automation. I don't want to reduce micro by having the AI think and decide for me (as they did with planet governors). I want to reduce micro with automation systems that execute my decisions automatically. I don't want AI automation, I want mechanical automation. The latter is what the game needs. But the former is easier for them because the AI code is already there - the AI uses it. They just take the AI plans and stick a simple selection UI in front of it.
Here is my biggest fear for 1.6, the starbase patch. They are going to put a UI in front of the AI's existing star base governors, and call it good. I fear they are going to take the easy UI/coding route, just as they did with the planet governors, and give us a system that will reduce micro only for those who don't really care how the starbase is built up as long as it kinda fills a particular role. What it really needs is a custom governor creator, queueing/prioritizing modules, including ones not yet researched, so all you have to do is request constructors and done. History is not on my side.
Yeah, I've never considered this a bad game. The gameplay uses a good recipe. Thinking back to all my negative posts, nearly all are UI gripes, not so much gameplay. Like, if I'm playing a game and I'm spending 75% of my time moving my mouse around the screen because the buttons and actions are inconveniently placed and the info I need is in tooltips all over the place instead of readily available on the screen, and I have to manually do a bunch of obvious stuff over and over because the game doesn't support more automation (not AI automation, I mean mechanical automation) that means I'm spending only 25% of the time playing the game. Having logged hundreds of hours playing the game since beta, it has been wearing on me.Here is my biggest fear for 1.6, the starbase patch. They are going to put a UI in front of the AI's existing star base governors, and call it good. I fear they are going to take the easy UI/coding route, just as they did with the planet governors, and give us a system that will reduce micro only for those who don't really care how the starbase is built up as long as it kinda fills a particular role. What it really needs is a custom governor creator, queueing/prioritizing modules, including ones not yet researched, so all you have to do is request constructors and done. History is not on my side.
Yea, i get it,,, but personally i enjoy the whole starbase micro management,,, the constant big difficulty i have is remembering which starbases to send constructors too!! I am forever ejecting constructors from starbases after trying to upgrade but its already upgraded!!!! lol
In Galciv2 i could easily remember starbase upgrade status via which sector they are in. Not that i think starbases were better in galciv2,,, just easier to remember! lol
Re being irritated,
Yes. I'm irritated.
A lot of it boils down to good will. I rely on Eviator in the Ashes forums for his input. So I tend to trust what he says.. He's got a lot of good will with me at this point By contrast. If all I hear from someone is endless "What have you done for me lately" posts I have little time for that. I'm pretty unhappy with Nas right now as I made clear in the other thread.
I didn't design GalCiv III. Ashes of the Singularity is my game. I consult on GalCiv III so I mostly watch what's happening from the outside. I play GalCiv III as a player so I have my own views on what I think is good/bad.
But the threads insisting the game is terrible, yada yada are not new. Every GalCiv game has had people complaining about it. Heck, you should see the StarCraft forums. Every game has a cottage industry of negative people. The only difference here is that the company CEO hangs out on the forums and I have limited patience for endless kvetching. Especially when so many meaningful updates have been made to the game already.
As for DLC. DLC is what pays for the updates and tends to use scripters or art resources (keeping the art team busy).
For what it's worth, Naselus has put a tremendous amount of modding work into the game. I don't always agree with him either, but since his knowledge of the internal guts is better than (apparently) even some of the dev team, his opinion carries much more weight than some drive-by Debbie Downer.
Then I suspect he's gotten burned out. It might serve him (and me) well if he took a break.
I've said this for years, and Brad has probably heard this for years - I complain more about games I really like than games I don't. The difference between say, a 10/10 game and a 9/10 game is more significant than the difference between 9/10 and 8/10, and down the line. If a 6/10 improves to a 7/10, that doesn't really impact me that much in a world where 8/10 is pretty easy to find regularly. If I truly do not like a game at all, and think it has little potential to be great, I'd stop complaining about it and start ignoring it. I'm ok with waiting, I waited 3 years+ for War of Magic to become LH, and it did, and SK was awesome as well.
GalCiv3- I believe it has that potential, but my own personal feeling is that the economy/build of the game holds it back. There's a lot of good stuff in there, but I find that part of the game to be unfun enough that it holds everything else back (and there is a lot of good in GalCiv III)
My question is this: will you, in a future expansion, aim for a full replacement of the build part of the game to something less micromanagey than a per-planet wheel? At this point I think this part of game needs replacement not iterative change, and I feel strongly enough about it that it influences my entire opinion on the game itself, especially since I have alternatives (which include LH, which is my 4X of choice until Stellaris, the SK expansion, or At the Gates come out)
If the answer is no, I can accept it and just wait for the SK expansion, Star Control (will get that but don't think I want to do EA), and the eventual sequel in the Elemental series (I really want to see you do a fantasy-game on your new engine- I felt like Elemental was hamstrung heavily by the limitations of its engine). If the answer is yes, but it will be a long while, I'm ok with that, I'll just wait until 2017 or 2018 if needed. If I die or lose my ability to play games by 2018, then I have bigger problems than games not being 10/10.
Re economy, I plan to replace the entire economic system in the expand alone. But not in base galciv III.
Exactly my thoughts.
Mine too.
Paul has stated and shown his playstyle in videos previously a turtle strategy basically which I'd say is a casual beginner playstyle it's the equivalent of loose/passive in poker, if winning is the aim it's not an optimal strategy. Many issues that a lot of players have with micromanagement wouldn't be so noticeable with that playstyle so that's a theory I have why Stardock doesn't see its importance, and who beyond Paul and Brad actually make any decisions on what goes into the game or is worked on? Brads stated quite clearly it doesn't have much to do with him he's working on Ashes, though I'm sure he sweeps in and says do this, this and this and makes the big decisions. i.e. make content we can sell DLC expansions.
At this stage in development is there anyone one on the team at Stardock who is constantly playing the game and is actually good at it, beating Godlike easily like players in the community, I doubt it if ever. And even if they did does anyone have the clout or persuasiveness to change Brads mind on anything? So I just don't think anyone there gets many of the issues the game has or can't do anything about it because their not Brad, despite the feedback on the forums we are just considered irritants by the decision maker(s). I think the schedule is set in stone, unmovable you get what your given and if you don't like it **** off is the attitude.
The wheel was when the mob descended I think that's the feedback it takes from the community to make a difference, well thought out reasonable opinions just don't seem to work, if there's any sniff of perceived criticism.
Sure but those posts are usually short involve swearing, abuse and usually in CAPS not thought out opinions like many on these forums are.
The thing is so many more people would happily buy the DLC if they weren't beset by these small often easily fixable frustrating issues. Would it really hurt your bottom line that much if some/more time was devoted to it, would it stop the work on DLC/Expansions? This isn't a case of people making unreasonable demands, small development team or not.
I came up with a idea last night. Its like sponsoring planets, except its for starbases not planets. Planets sponcer shipyards. You could optionally sponcer a starbases with a shipyard. If a shipyard sponcers a starbases then it only builds a constructive to send to starbases.
There are more engineers working on GalCiv III (And have been for the past year) than there were on GalCiv II.
The problem, imo, is one of attitude. I agree with most of the suggestions I see posted. You articulate the issue in your above statement: "case of people making unreasonable demands". Unless you have some sort of power over me, and I assure you, you don't, don't make demands. It's not constructive.
Moreover, We will never agree with your premise - that GalCiv III 1.0 was somehow something that needed to be "fixed". The more someone tries to insist that we somehow "owe" them these updates the less inclined I am to put resources on a posted idea unless I determine it's something that will benefit most players.
A lot of what ends up getting focused on ends to be from the metrics we get from how people play the game.
For example. the planet wheel thing? If you read the forums, you'd think that it was some core feature. It's not. Almost nobody even presses the govern button. How about multiplayer? Half a percent of the player base has even pressed the multiplayer button on the main menu. But if you read forums, you'd think multiplayer was some widely used feature.
Look, I'm a forum guy myself. That's what got me into the game industry in the first place. But don't kid yourself into thinking that forum posters represent anything beyond a tiny minority and often a pain in my ass.
We will continue to do what we've always done: Make updates to our games based on what we determine will benefit the most people as well as insert features that we think will make our fans happy. Note that neither of those paths involve supporting vocal critics. My view is, if you don't like GalCiv III, find another game.
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