Dev team, fwiw here are my thoughts about the game after 50 hours of play. First, the good. I felt like I got my money's worth -- after all I played 50 hours. Overall the game worked well for a BETA. I had no crashes at all in that time. There were a few glitches where the game got stuck (i.e. I could not spend a ideology point) but saving and restarted fixed it each time. So no biggie. I LOVE the core world system. It does help deal with late game stall. I definitely think that you are on the right track there. Also I appreciated the ability to slowly improve core worlds over time. It kept that mechanic interesting.
Now for the bad. My biggest complaint would be that after about the midpoint the game feels static. Your fleet ravages out taking over enemy core worlds and colonies like so many locusts. I kept expecting some kind of end game mechanic that would keep it interesting. I was playing on the default setting which I think was "easy" or the equivalent so maybe it would have been more fun in the second half on a harder setting. But I doubt it. I think harder would have made it harder to build up fleets but once that was done the last part would still be pretty boring.
One issue for me was that the sectors were just more of the same. I think it might help if sectors further out had some new resources that were necessary to expand and maybe much harder enemies. Another idea would be to have a threat that is triggered by exploring too far -- wake the sleeping dragon sort of thing. Maybe a horde of Revenge ships that seek out your home world once you encounter them or something.
Another issue is that the little story plots were too shallow to be very interesting. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop when I allowed religious sects to settle in my colonies. I like the idea of these little stories but I'd like to see further development so that the consequences go a few more steps.
Overall I think its a good game that could be great in the final version. Thank you for making it. : )
Thank you for the kind words and constructive feedback. I will pass this on to the team.
Thanks for the feedback cravens1968, I have a couple of questions for you that will help us better understand how you're feeling about the mid to late game experience.
What difficulty are you playing at?
Have you tried out any of the Galactic Challenges?
If you haven't tried them before and you've run into a game that is feeling like you're going to have an easy win, it might be time to give one a look-see.
The game is really solid. It seems like the dev team has made a disciplined effort of making sure that the mechanics all work fluidly. It plays super well. Quality.
My first few play throughs were with an "easy" galaxy. After I posted the review, I played again on "bright" difficulty. I also selected a lower level of habitable worlds so that there would be more early competition for them. These settings made the first half more difficult as I had to colony rush and then expand without triggering a war. But once I had enough fleet logistics I was able to steamroll through again.
If the Galactic challenges were things like "survey x anomalies", "discover x technology", then yes I did those. I liked them also. A good mechanic. I think that it may have been more fun if the rewards were things that you couldn't get any other way. Also they should expire so there is a degree of urgency. I mean I'm going to survey the anomalies anyway as a matter of course.
BTW I love the mechanic where certain ships (transports, constructors, colony) take pops. Its adds some strategy and makes developing pops important.
My issue with the endgame was in a few parts. First, its super easy to swarm an enemy civ because the cheapest fighter can take over a regular colony world. So you can attack all of their colonies at once and then pick off their core worlds with a few transports. Second, the fleet mechanics (which I really enjoy) allow you to develop an overwhelming advantage over the enemy fleets if you are patient. Once you have that it becomes a tedious mop up job. It sort of feels like that japanese game Katamari. The more planets you roll up the easier it is to roll up planets. I think it would more fun if you had to digest new colonies some way. Conquer a civ but then you have to spend time using diplomacy to avoid war while you integrate and build up your new colonies. Third, I think there need to be new resources and tech that are locked away in further more dangerous sectors so that you are always tempted to overextend to get that new tech.
The game is so good already. The recruitment mechanics are great, especially early game when you have to decide between rushing a colony ship or buying a leader. I play civ VI also. But it always bogs down with micromanagement. GCIV felt so much cleaner in the endgame. I really appreciated that.
I think the biggest underdeveloped opportunity for fun is the little story lines. It is super fun to decide whether to let the crew uplift themselves. But nothing ever happened with that. No super human tried to take over a colony or depose my government or start a new religion that makes people unhappy. It would seem relatively easy to add such consequences in and maybe organize them so that they are more likely to occur if the player is too successful. Also I think the stories would be better if it wasn't spelled out so clearly what the immediate consequences were. Once you realize that there are no hidden future consequences coming down the road, it just become deciding whether you need credits, trade goods, etc.
It doesn't seem like the AI cheats--which is appreciated. By that I mean, for example, the AI doesn't seem to know automatically where the good planets are. I think that is great. But I think that the game might benefit from a story teller (Rimworld-like) approach to challenges. This might be an easy way to extend the little stories. If the player has too big a katamari ball of planets, let the uplifted crew throw some planets in to rebellion. Or if the player didn't uplift, have one of those crystal intelligences reach out...wait you don't have any uplifted pops smart enough to speak to the crystal -- too bad for that colony.
I hope that helps understand my experience. Please continue to do the good work. I'll buy your DLC when you put it out. : )
Two more things -- I really appreciate how the game is already so customizable. That helps with replayability. : ) Also I've been reading posts by people with repetitive crashes which has me scratching my head. I still haven't had a single crash.
On the 2nd point first. I think that the stories/plots/missions etc will be some of the easiest pieces of the game to expand on. As this would just require people writing more content, I suspect that there will be more stuff in the future, and more involved stuff also. Just my opinion.
On the 1st point. I believe it was Sycloness on the Discord that had mentioned a while back that he wanted an option to place harder AI civs farther away from the player. So as you expanded you'd run into harder civs. I think this would largely accomplish what you're describing.
I know this is work and probably out of scope for 1.0 but I would like to see a stock pregenerated map included in the game. I'm sure someone at some point has hit a game and said "this is a really cool map layout". I go back to the very first strategy game* I ever played, Atari Adventure. It came with 3 game modes. Game 1 was really simple, a 5 year old could do it. Game 2 was complicated and forced you to understand all of the game's mechanics to win. Game 3 was completely random and what made it a classic but games 1-2 were the on-ramp that got you to where you could play game 3. The brilliance of that approach has not waned in 40 years.
* yes, I said strategy game
@Tid242. Agree completely.
Another idea -- and this may already be the case as I haven't looked in to modding gciv yet -- but it would be amazing if modders could add these stories. If this part was partially cloud-sourced, I bet player/modders would come up with a ton of super cool, complex story/missions.
Yea, the stories, plots stuff came pretty late in development. We weren’t sure people would like them so the team played it safe.
In 1.0 a ton of new ones got added that are related to your governors.
One thought is to make an actual quest editor and then allow people and make their own stories and events to share.
This has been mentioned before, but I would like to be able to minimize the triple-choice pop-up screen that occurs when an event or colonization appears.
As the choices affect the Ideology Point acquisition and distribution, this would allow users to check their current Ideology Point distribution before making the event choice.
As for conquering undefended colony worlds, I agree that a tiny ship should not be allowed to capture a colony world.
I suggest that, at the very least, a small hull should be a prerequisite for these captures.
Or you could require the attacker to have a minimum number of logistics points in the attacking fleet - say 4+.
This is coming. They had tried it during beta but it created a bunch of Zorder issues. But it's being looked at.
I'd like to see something that the player can build to easily defend planets ala Cardassian defense platforms that are built and then deployed like Starbase modules but for colonies.
I like that suggestion, Frogboy
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