I posted on the 4x reddit in response to this article: https://the4xplorer.net/2019/03/29/galactic-civilizations-3-2019-review/
I am re-posting it here because I saw today that the development team appears to be actively soliciting responses from the modder community and both Horemvore and Gauntlet (the two people who have, I suppose along with Airmaster and some of the other ship builders) made the greatest contribution to this community.
Overall, the thread can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/4Xgaming/comments/b6ywnw/my_comprehensive_thoughts_on_galactic/
My biggest problem with Stardock's roll-out of Galactic Civilizations is their disinterest in doing some basic bug-fixing and quality-of-life improvements. The ideology system has been nearly broken since launch and does not scale with the size of the map properly at all. Many of the mercenaries make no sense given subsequent changes to the game and have clearly incorrect values, especially in their costs. That has been the case since that DLC came out three years ago. The commonwealth system is completely unusable. The research speed setting does not work as intended. These all sound like piddly complaints but they add up. They introduce a new mechanic and it's a roll of dice whether they'll pay any subsequent attention to that mechanic again. They've done a good job revisiting things like the tech tree, Starbase micromanagement and the resource system and still haven't touched really basic issues like the fact you can't cycle on a project or colony governors — both of which have been issues in more or less exactly the same form for four years.
The game was sold as a framework for endless modularity. That was the selling point. They were stripping the game back to bare bones, back to GalCiv II pre-DLC levels, in order to build an extremely robust system for for games of epic scale. But then there was next to no Workshop support at launch. Then you needed a DLC to access the robust Civilization designer. Then — and this is by far the most frustrating — there wasn't going to be any workshop support for mods at all. More to the point, Brad Wardell has the tendency to more-than-occasionally condescend to the users with a very, it-can't-be-done-and-its-shitty-of-you-to-even-ask comment. Never mind the fact that moddability was a central pillar of the game's initial sales pitch. Never mind the fact that Civilization, Stellaris, Endless Space, Endless Legend, the various Total War incarnations and even the fucking MOO reboot all somehow managed to integrate Steam support for mods. In fact, the only other 4x game of commensurate standing in the market that doesn't have Steam workshop support is another Stardock title: Sins of a Solar Empire.
Stardock killed what would have likely been a very robust community shortly after launch. So, now, four years out when they are doing genuinely interesting things with the game, I think most people's reaction is "oh yeah, I kinda forgot about that game" before it gets a brief re-appraisal before promptly being put back on the shelf.
Stardock used to be such a fan-friendly and open developer relative to the marketplace. I don't think they've gotten worse on that score necessarily, but they've been surpassed in both transparency and responsiveness by many of their competitors. I have watched the community that built up around the release dissipate more and more and have watched the users that really devoted themselves to improving the game, most notably Horemvore and Gauntlet, just become more and more deflated with each passing release.
Galactic Civilizations 3 is a fine enough game and it's been interesting to watch as the developers have tried to figure out in real-time what they want the game to be. I think the problem is that the developers, especially Brad, are extremely concerned with what they want the game to be and are only interested in listening to what the fans are asking for if and when what they're asking for happen to lines up with the institutional priorities of the company.
I think 15 years ago, Brad's personal preferences overlapped a lot more with the desires of the fanbase than they do now. I'll grant that a non-trivial percentage of that comes from the fans themselves being more entitled, demanding and impatient than they've been in the past thanks to their access to the developers through social media and the internet. However, I think Gauntlet is a really interesting case study in how that does not come anywhere close to explaining all of it. Gauntlet has simply toiled away making his amazing mod, which he is forced to modulate to suit the 14 simultaneous builds Stardock pursues at any given time, that he must re-build frequently because Stardock makes no attempt to bug fix in a way that makes the modder's lives easier. He never gets heated. He never acts entitled. He is always reasonable. He always asks and never demands. So far as I know, almost none of Gauntlet's substantive requests have ever been implemented into the game.
I think Brad has got a very strong sense of what he thinks is important and when he was younger, that aligned very strongly with what his player base thought was important. He makes cursory attempts to be inward looking and he is reasonable about criticizing his own work. It's actually a joy to watch him think through his own game publicly.
But, and this is a huge but, he doesn't listen. He talks and he writes and he reflects but he is largely impervious to feedback from his players. He is totally inward-looking. He is very good at using his institutional standing to bask in the plaudits of the users that fawn over him and either ignore or even occasionally bully the users that don't.
As a result, a game that had the potential for greatness — a game that comes from a lineage of greatness — is little more than an "oh yeah, I heard that game got a lot better after [place DLC here]."
Hey there!
Real quick... your quoted post is grey on black on this forum right now... try removing the formatting... it's kinda unreadable (unless you highlight) and might be why you haven't gotten much response (not that the forums are exactly buzzing these days)).
Annnnddd I just wanted to say thank you for the very kind words you've had for/about me. It's late... so I'm going to post another reply with more thought tomorrow.
Not sure why it did that. Thanks for the heads up.
Quick note: I just fixed your formatting for you. I am guessing you copy/pasted it from the 4X blog which caused the issue.
I'm saddened to hear some of this but it's also necessary that we know where things can be improved on both for the present and future. As you may have read elsewhere, judging by referencing some of the difficulties Brad has expressed, the game had a different designer and a fairly different set of objectives for its 1.0 release.
Since then some things have been improved, and outright changed quite radically, however a lot of the old design ideas are still legacy in the code which can cause issues when major changes are made. For the DLC issues we have heard and have done a few things to help minimize the impact such as making Crusade mandatory in the Core Edition (the base game) which new owners buy.
We are committed to longterm support for all of our games and are still looking at bugs and feedback both here and other places (Steam, Discord, Reddit, Twitter). I hope that you will continue to post and help us steer the ship.
rynebrandon...
Thank you for posting... unfortunately... every time I try to write a proper answer I get too heated lol. I got up to 3000 words on one attempt lol. So now the final version... as concise as I can be.
Finally... one point that just can't be bullet-ed...
"a lot of the old design ideas are still legacy in the code which can cause issues when major changes are made. For the DLC issues"
This is part of a continual BS narrative that I really find distasteful (not from Schism in particular or anything). Brad has on several occasions spoken (in my opinion) disparagingly and coyly blaming the designers of GC3 prior to Crusade for all of the woes of GC3 today. It is literally the only thing I've seen him say/do in 10+ years that has made me doubt his leadership ability.
It's that whole "good generals don't blame their soldiers" idea.
I think this way because when they decided to make Crusade and subsequent DLC they decided to radically depart from the design of the core game... that obviously would then drastically affect the coherency of their DLC and features. They chose to make that change and they chose not to put in the work to update their DLC/features/etc.
They didn't have to, and the prior team can't be guilty of that choice because it came after them.
I don't like that they made that choice, but I also respect hard choices and acknowledge that I don't see the whole picture. What I don't respect is side-stepping the consequences and playing blame game. It isn't necessary frankly... do what most companies and people do... say nothing and let it drop. It's just more civilized.
As a side note... I've seen how the previous design worked and it wasn't some sort of travesty... it just wasn't "new enough" for people to feel good about the game... it lacked features... (that were obviously going to be slated for DLC because that's what any company would do) ... and it had the "Wheel". In every way GC3 on opening day was a bog-standard 4X. Whereas Crusade was a really radical and in many many ways anti-realistic update... but it flows nicely (because every 10 turns you get a pretty citizen/bonus to your empire like clockwork and don't actually have to do any work for it lol).
The incredible back and forth about the wheel by the way... showcases what was the real problem... not design from the previous iteration of GC but a failure of communication strategy and leadership. Crusade was born in order to "move past" and "reset" the conversation as much as it was born to make money I suspect.
Could I be wrong? Yeah of course... but I think what happened with "Food" post-crusade was a repeat of the dynamic I'm talking about... just less extreme.
So in conclusion? Well... I don't know if Brad "really doesn't listen"... but I do think that SD and it's fans have fallen into a really tough and painful pattern of behavior... that often looks like communication but really isn't conveying anything productive. Like everything else in the real world... it's due to a lot of variables at play on both sides and is fueled by unrealistic expectations.
Personally... I'd really rather see that fixed than the whole "modding is tough" issue...
You know know what they say, "when you are not satisfied here, go elsewhere". So I went and found Factorio and its devs Wube. Ever since then, I present them as role model with their outreach to community. They are active on their forums and listen to the community. The amount of content they added that wasn't in the original design is amazing (the game is still in early access). Most of the ideas for it comes from the community or mod creators. The game is on Steam, yet they created their own mod portal to facilitate even the non-Steam users. And most importantly, every week they release the "Factorio Friday Facts" documenting what they are working on, which allows you to map the development and watch the progress they've made in the last 6 years, which is amazing!
I agree. Like I said, in 2006, SD was the Ur-example of a responsive development team. I don't think they've gotten worse, I think a lot of their competitors have gotten better. The Factorio team is an excellent example. In fact, they're almost an unfair example as they are kind of the pure boy scouts of the gaming world. I'm not sure it's fair to expect that level of gamer-friendly purity.
The Cities:Skylines team at Colossal Order and Paradox broadly are strong examples as well. What's notable it that both Colossal Order and Paradox games have some pretty substantial issues and their fleece-their-customers with a bajillion piddly DLC is certainly not above reproach but there's simply no denying the discourse between them and their players is more constructive.
A comparison to No Man's Sky isn't quite fair as the overall discourse is nowhere near that toxic and the GC3 did not disappoint to that extent. However, I think the comparison is informative. It's fair to say that for long-time fans of the franchise, given the innovation the franchise was known for and how well the game held up, even 6, 7, 8 years out, the possibilities of Galactic Civilizations with modern accouterments was just so incredibly exciting. They certainly stoked that excitement (as is their job, they are selling a game afterwards).
@Gauntlet It's funny to me that I'm arguing this to you of all people, but I think I'm going to push back a little bit on your point about modding. I often hear some version of the idea that modding should not be used as a cure-all for the various ills the developers themselves should have taken care of. But frankly, that strikes me as making the perfect the enemy of the good. Factorio, Civ5/Civ6, RimWorld, Cities:Skylines—I would guess a hefty majority of the players of those games don't play without at least some mods. It's not an accident that they're among some of the most hours-consuming games currently on the market. Mods can't fix a bad game, but they can make a good game great and GalCiv3 is definitely a good game.
Yes, it would be more ideal for their to be a constructive back and forth between developers and fans but, short of that, any meaningful facilitation of the modding community would have gone a long way toward ameliorating that issue. Players would feel less like they were shouting into the void (since there could have been QoL and bug-fixing by the modding community) and we could have been showing the mods what we wanted instead of telling them what we wanted.
So, Gauntlet, I get your point and stipulate to it, but frankly, instead of bemoaning the state of a destructive and angry discourse, I think the more constructive thing to do would be to build some scaffolding that improves it.
As just one final example of what I'm talking about is this thread right here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/1/1291817837621490153/. In it, someone solicits ideas for new citizen promotions and the developer P.Shaw chimes in to say he was interested to hear our ideas. So, I went ham on it and spent like an hour coming up with potential ideas for promotions. Now, I don't want to come off like someone whining that no one came along and turned my ideas into reality but it's indicative of the stop-start that's characterized the ongoing development of the game. There's nowhere for this creative energy to go, so it gets channeled into frustration and sometimes, ultimately anger.
I don't think a better integration of modding is the solution to every problem, but I don't think there's any other change that would do more to improve the gaming experience or the relationship between the devs and the gamers.
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