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victrix posted:this is one of my favorite genres but I can't get past the illwinter jank to enjoy Elysium :{ It looks like they spent more time on the UI this time around so it might be more accessible.
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Aug 15, 2021 00:40
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I'm still wondering if there is ever going to be a Sins of a Solar Empire sequel. It's been almost 10 years since Rebellion and the company that made it, Ironclad Games, is still in business.
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Aug 15, 2021 01:39
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Entorwellian posted:I'm still wondering if there is ever going to be a Sins of a Solar Empire sequel. It's been almost 10 years since Rebellion and the company that made it, Ironclad Games, is still in business. I think their failed MOBA game in 2015 basically drained their coffers and they've just barely been existing ever since.
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Aug 15, 2021 01:47
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Thanks for the replies, I'll take a look at Elysium from afar I guess and see if the AI is a bit better. I never could get into dominion, it's not that great in SP and the MP is a bit too glacial for my taste. Thom12255 posted:I think their failed MOBA game in 2015 basically drained their coffers and they've just barely been existing ever since. There's something funny and sad about that company's game list on their official website is just Sins and DLC
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Aug 15, 2021 02:21
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I wish diplomacy relationship webs would show map positions of the factions you're interacting with
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Aug 15, 2021 14:50
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I can’t remember the last time that I’ve finished a game of Stellaris — what’s the key to not having 30 min + turns when the governor system is so awful? The early and mid game are fun — late game becomes a literal job. What do you guys do to still enjoy the game without being overcome by babysitting 30 systems and 50 colonies?
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Aug 15, 2021 15:38
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By the time you've finished exploring unoccupied space you've used up all the fun and it's time to stop playing Stellaris until at least the next big update
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Aug 15, 2021 16:11
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tehinternet posted:I can’t remember the last time that I’ve finished a game of Stellaris — what’s the key to not having 30 min + turns when the governor system is so awful? Put those systems on auto-build?
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Aug 15, 2021 16:12
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Compared to Distant Worlds, Stellaris is just so slow. I keep buying the DLC's, hoping somehow that one of them will click with me and I'll like Stellaris, but it hasn't worked so far. Whereas in Distant Worlds, I feel like the world is more alive and I understand what goals I have from the jump. And reaching those goals can be a challenge instead of a slog. I bought the original Distant Worlds, and then the next iteration, and then the final iteration and never felt like I wasted money, even though I bought the same game three times.
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Aug 15, 2021 16:38
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I like Distant Worlds but it's also a very slow game. Slower than Stellaris in my experience. Also even worse of a hell grind once you've got yourself established and want to actually "finish" a game, unless you play with the race specific victory conditions and have one which you can basically accidentally win with almost as soon as they become active. On top of that unless you dive deep into micro-management hell and actually enjoy it, Distant Worlds is really shallow in terms of actual content. It's basically a ship design game with an overworld to setup battles for your designed ships. Beyond that it really doesn't have a whole lot to it, especially if you play with any automation.
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Aug 15, 2021 16:55
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Archonex posted:Distant Worlds would like to have a word with you. Designing my own ship to go explore the galaxy and have adventures with while I automated my empire was fun as heck. Ditto for all the neat ways that you could expand on the presets to create all sorts of new roles. The thing was, most of DW was some combination of micro-hell, didn't actually work/AI couldn't use it, or was never explained enough meaning you either had to guess, experiment for hours, or dig through obscure grog boards. DW had lots of cool things in theory, but it was very much a groglike game you had to struggle into. If you managed to learn how to play both the game itself and around its problems you could certainly have fun with it, but it really wasn't the ultimate 4x all others should aspire to, Stellaris hasn't had tiles in like 3/4 years either, so it also sounds like your comparison is with release Stellaris vs multiple expansions and years of patching DW, so of course you'll feel the latter had more content.
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Aug 15, 2021 19:43
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Jack Trades posted:Put those systems on auto-build? B-b-but then it’s not efficient okay I have to manage every single colony and make sure I’m minning every max
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Aug 16, 2021 06:01
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The easy solution is to quit the second the crisis is defeated instead of waiting 100 years to win.
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Aug 16, 2021 07:18
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You can adjust the end date to your liking, so cut off however much you normally spend twiddling your thumbs.
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Aug 16, 2021 09:25
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Once victory is assured in DW I just add more add more to automation, usually just leaving military movements to human control. Hell, you can happily toggle that and do the dishes for a bit and hopefully come back to slightly fewer enemy planets. My particular brainworms are that I can't quit before the win screen though.
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Aug 16, 2021 11:40
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Anyone try this? https://store.steampowered.com/app/1113030/Stellar_Warfare/ Stellar Warfare.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:37
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Darkrenown posted:The thing was, most of DW was some combination of micro-hell, didn't actually work/AI couldn't use it, or was never explained enough meaning you either had to guess, experiment for hours, or dig through obscure grog boards. DW had lots of cool things in theory, but it was very much a groglike game you had to struggle into. If you managed to learn how to play both the game itself and around its problems you could certainly have fun with it, but it really wasn't the ultimate 4x all others should aspire to, Tiles was just the immediate example early buyers (and by extension, likely most people) would be familiar with. The universe really is sterile and lifeless even in the latest DLC. They've substituted actual engagement and activity in the world for a barebones Crusader Kings-esque approach to politics and intrigue that doesn't really have much of the latter (and is just a menu with votes that usually just change the numbers related to upkeep or other stats of the factions in the case of the former). The Utopia and Apocalypse DLC's just ripped off existing mods in a subpar way (that they still outdo and fix a lot of the game with) as well. Even if they wanted too i'm not really certain they can fix the lifeless nature of the game since the back end coding is just atrocious in not causing the game to lag. To give an idea of how bad it is, apparently one of the reasons the late game used to lag so hard is because every pop was constantly checking to see if it could advance in rank to the next social strata. This includes pops that couldn't do this, such as slaves. Which kind of just summarizes the bad efficiency of design that Stellaris has, along with the myriad number of potentially game breaking bugs it's had over time as they keep changing and in a few cases even minimizing the complexity of the game. For example one of the many revamps introduced the pop growth issue that was around for a bit that made building tall not possible without min maxing and gaming the system. Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 16:54
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It has been a mistake to put so much resources into remaking Stellaris multiple times on the same codebase when they really just need to make a sequel from the ground up. Victoria 3 is honestly that sequel from what I've seen of it.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:56
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Archonex posted:Tiles was just the immediate example early buyers (and by extension, likely most people) would be familiar with. The universe really is sterile and lifeless even in the latest DLC. They've substituted actual engagement and activity in the world for a barebones Crusader Kings-esque approach to politics and intrigue that doesn't really have much of the latter (and is just a menu with votes that usually just change the numbers related to upkeep or other stats of the factions in the case of the former). You seem pretty annoyed with Stellaris, but this has shifted massively from "DW is great and Stellaris should have copied it" which was what I was responding to and disagreeing with before. If you don't like Stellaris, that's fine, you can like or dislike anything you want to - but I'm sure I could also list a pile of bugs and bad coding with DW if I cared to look into it. Saying "Utopia and Apocalypse DLC's just ripped off existing mods in a subpar way" is nonsense. Just say you like DW more than Stellaris. That's fine, you can have that opinion without having to make up things like this to justify it. I disagree with your point about minimizing complexity too, I don't follow how the popgrowth change made things less complex than "all pops grow everywhere forever at the same rate and you don't need to think about anything", and for example, the tiles to jobs rework make the economy notable more complex. I also disagree with the idea that most people only know of the tile system - if you look on steam charts you can see a large surge of players after each major patch which is comparable to the launch numbers (around 60 k surges with a 10k player baseline), so it seems to me that many players who had Stellaris at launch have at least come back to check out major revisions. Another example is that the launch day sales for each major DLC grew steadily larger over time, suggesting there's a steadily increasingly core of long-time players. Finally, I know DW was sold outside of steam (But prior owners did get steam codes IIRC) and that popular isn't the same as good (plus DW is an older game), but Steam charts also shows DW with an all time peak of ~1200 players and averages 30. The different is such that I think it's pretty clear a lot more people want a Stellaris style game than a DW style game and that Stellaris didn't drop the ball by not being more like DW. Thom12255 posted:It has been a mistake to put so much resources into remaking Stellaris multiple times on the same codebase when they really just need to make a sequel from the ground up. Victoria 3 is honestly that sequel from what I've seen of it. Ironically there was a long hard fight to make higher ups finally give up on the idea of reusing V2 code and just having a graphics update. Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 17:47
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This forum's relationship with Stellaris is really special.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:18
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Comparing Steam plays of DW1 vs Stellaris is meaningless. How much $$ has Paradox put into marketing their game vs how much marketing $$ Matrix Games put into marketing DW1 is not even something for discussion as Matrix hasn't marketed DW1 and Paradox has been aggressive about marketing all of their games. Lots of playthroughs, free keys to major streamers, etc.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:18
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Mayveena posted:Comparing Steam plays of DW1 vs Stellaris is meaningless. How much $$ has Paradox put into marketing their game vs how much marketing $$ Matrix Games put into marketing DW1 is not even something for discussion as Matrix hasn't marketed DW1 and Paradox has been aggressive about marketing all of their games. Lots of playthroughs, free keys to major streamers, etc. I did put a big disclaimer there, but sure I didn't specifically mention marketing budgets. Even so, the difference between 10-20k regular players and 33 is... it's pretty large. I don't think you can put it all down to marketing. If you think DW would have an equal or greater number of players if it had had an equal amount of marketing, well ok, I cannot prove that one way or the other although personally I would doubt it. If you don't, then my point about relative popularity stands. Again, I'm not trying to prove DW is terrible or that people are wrong to prefer it. I'm looking forward to playing DW2 myself. I was just disagreeing with Archonex saying Stellaris messed up by not being more like DW.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:42
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I don't think DW or Stellaris are good games, but Distant World's is at least doing things with are interesting. Stellaris is deeply derivative, on top of being a boring slog.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:47
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Ironically, marketing relatively niche games (IE ones where TV commercials aren't going to do much for you, so not Madden or Battlefield, etc) has got to be cheaper and easier than ever. It really just comes down to giving a handful of popular streamers/youtubers like Quill18, etc, a free key and asking them to play the game for an hour or two and record it. You're giving up a few hundred dollars max, and even then you can't count them as lost sales because who knows whether they'd ever buy the game on their own. In return, you're getting your game out there in front of your core audience with someone they like playing and probably talking up the game. Even an extremely minimal conversion rate is going to be a net positive. Isn't Matrix the company that was famous for refusing to ever put games on sale? IIRC they used to be the publisher for Illwinter's games (Dominions, etc) and that was one of the reasons Illwinter split from them. They seem allergic to anything approaching marketing.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:50
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Darkrenown posted:I did put a big disclaimer there, but sure I didn't specifically mention marketing budgets. Even so, the difference between 10-20k regular players and 33 is... it's pretty large. I don't think you can put it all down to marketing. If you think DW would have an equal or greater number of players if it had had an equal amount of marketing, well ok, I cannot prove that one way or the other although personally I would doubt it. If you don't, then my point about relative popularity stands. If players don't know about a game, they aren't going to play it. The only way people know about DW1 is by word of mouth. Given the huge number of games one can play where there's active marketing going on, it's totally expected that few would be playing DW1. Players nowadays are looking for videos and reviews on popular review sites. DW1 has no reviews on popular review sites (or at least not recently), while every time a new DLC drops for Stellaris, new reviews and videos pop up. Proving it is easy. Use Google and YT search for each of those games. Frankly Stellaris reminds me of what in board games we'd call fiddliness. All these bullshit details. Why do I have to care about all this poo poo? I come from MOO and Alpha Cenatauri and Civ 1-6. Get to where you want to go and let the player play the game, not care about minutia. Mayveena fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 18:51
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Zurai posted:Ironically, marketing relatively niche games (IE ones where TV commercials aren't going to do much for you, so not Madden or Battlefield, etc) has got to be cheaper and easier than ever. It really just comes down to giving a handful of popular streamers/youtubers like Quill18, etc, a free key and asking them to play the game for an hour or two and record it. You're giving up a few hundred dollars max, and even then you can't count them as lost sales because who knows whether they'd ever buy the game on their own. In return, you're getting your game out there in front of your core audience with someone they like playing and probably talking up the game. Even an extremely minimal conversion rate is going to be a net positive. DW1 now goes on sale when Steam has sales, so clearly they've moved on from that position, but yes, the original position was not to put the game on sale. Hopefully when DW2 releases, they will give Quill a key and pay him to do a video.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:53
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Stellaris for me had the same issue as Beyond Earth, where despite being technically competent, everything felt very 'designed and clinical'.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:54
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Mayveena posted:If players don't know about a game, they aren't going to play it. The only way people know about DW1 is by word of mouth. Given the huge number of games one can play where there's active marketing going on, it's totally expected that few would be playing DW1. Players nowadays are looking for videos and reviews on popular review sites. DW1 has no reviews on popular review sites (or at least not recently), while every time a new DLC drops for Stellaris, new reviews and videos pop up. Proving it is easy. Use Google and YT search for each of those games. That's not proving it. Plenty of bad games had huge marketing campaigns and still flopped. And a good game can still take off via word of mouth. Especially in the youtube/streaming era when word of mouth can turn into what marketers used to dream of. E: Since you edited Mayveena posted:Frankly Stellaris reminds me of what in board games we'd call fiddliness. All these bullshit details. Why do I have to care about all this poo poo? I come from MOO and Alpha Cenatauri and Civ 1-6. Get to where you want to go and let the player play the game, not care about minutia. OK, so what? If you think DW isn't full of pointless micro too then I don't think we have the same frame of reference at all. Or even SMAC and the civs come to that. Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 18:56
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Zurai posted:Isn't Matrix the company that was famous for refusing to ever put games on sale? IIRC they used to be the publisher for Illwinter's games (Dominions, etc) and that was one of the reasons Illwinter split from them. They seem allergic to anything approaching marketing. Their business model was to price their games to sell only to the five richest kings of Europe. It was some grognard ideology about the "value" of the games, or some such, and sales were anathema to this as well. Obviously the fact that you sell 100 times more at half the price (numbers estimated) made this fairly stupid and self sabotaging, so anyone with any audience gtfo's as soon as they can unless they've drunk the koolade. Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 19:01
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A round up of reviews for Amplitude's Humankind, which comes out tomorrow: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/p5gzg7/humankind_review_thread/ Seems it's a 7.5 game with half a point added for ambition.
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Aug 16, 2021 19:09
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Megazver posted:A round up of reviews for Amplitude's Humankind, which comes out tomorrow: Glad it's on Gamepass!
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Aug 16, 2021 19:11
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Megazver posted:Seems it's a 7.5 game with half a point added for ambition. Amplitude.txt
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Aug 16, 2021 19:17
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Falcorum posted:Stellaris for me had the same issue as Beyond Earth, where despite being technically competent, everything felt very 'designed and clinical'. I have played hundreds of hours of CK2 and 3, probably around a thousand combined. I got bored of Stellaris after 30-40 hours. That's decent playtime obviously but the game gets samey much faster than CK because you lack the character related drama and intrigue. In stellaris the difference between species and government types is what your species eats and if you're looking to genocide everyone else or not. It still all comes down to alloys, credits and pop with most bonuses and traits being cosmetic or convenient at best. The best part of Stellaris is the event writing IMO which is why the early to midgame is much more fun than microing your empire and sending your 1M fleet to crush 400k unbidden.
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Aug 16, 2021 19:26
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Darkrenown posted:Ironically there was a long hard fight to make higher ups finally give up on the idea of reusing V2 code and just having a graphics update. Is this similar to Johan’s insistence on imperator’s release that it was a great game because it took EU: Romes code base and added to it?
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Aug 16, 2021 19:30
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The reason why I still fairly regularly play Stellaris is because it has reasonably deep diplomacy options that let you work relationships of different factions against each other. I enjoyed playing Federation Builders in Stellaris even before the DLC that expanded the Federation and Galactic Community systems. Now, once you do create the federation, the AIs are incredibly inept at actually achieving anything but that's a different problem. The journey is more interesting than the destination and I haven't see any other 4X game that let's me do anything like that. It might be the case that all of those systems are totally derivative from Paradox's Grand Strategy games but I wouldn't know since I really don't like the Grand Strategy genre.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:13
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I loved Sword of the Stars, but its biggest flaw was also its greatest strength. The tactical combat was a ton of fun...at least until you got the AI hurling 100+ ships at multiple planets and you had to fight through 8 battles every turn that took 5 minutes each just to load, because you couldn't trust the auto-battle.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:16
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Stellaris doesn't feel lifeless to me. It's fun and good and the stories are fun to read. But I have only played a few tens of hours, not hundreds of hours, and I sometimes wonder if players in general expect a bit too much from games these days. If you haven't read all the little stories before and you haven't done everything in the game before, it's still exciting. I dunno, I'm rambling a bit. I think it's a fun game and I like making the little spaceships go around and discover things, and I like building little worlds. Distant Worlds - I do own it but I bounced off when I tried to learn it before. I should try again.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:26
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Stellaris feels great until you get near to the end of the mid-game and then everything starts to feel dead and pointless. To be fair, this isn't that unusual in a Civ game either but CK3/EU4 manages to avoid it entirely.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:38
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Thom12255 posted:Stellaris feels great until you get near to the end of the mid-game and then everything starts to feel dead and pointless. To be fair, this isn't that unusual in a Civ game either but CK3/EU4 manages to avoid it entirely. Yeah to be fair, I can count the number of games of Civ or Stellaris I've pushed past the midgame on one hand, probably. I just enjoy starting so much.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:45
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EU4 has the opposite problem, the early game is really slow and can drag a bit until you get going properly (I have several hundred hours in both Civ and Stellaris but have yet to make it to the industrial era/explore the entire galaxy)
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Aug 16, 2021 21:14
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