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SlothfulCobra posted:Politics are part of everything in real-world city building, but they're kind of absent in the game genre, with the main games that do try to address them being fairly anemic in how they effect a lot of the gameplay, so something that tries really hard to make it a major factor instead of minor flavor is going to be interesting at the least, whether or not it's fun. I've never seen this done well. I have seen it done poorly - looking at you, Urban Empire - but sadly I don't expect it to be any different from what I've seen of the FP2 beta. It's just trivial to keep all the factions happy, and if you make it hard to do that then you run a very large risk of not being able to sign laws/progress. I'm not sure this kind of feature is even balanceable, but if it is then 11bit hasn't unlocked the code yet. Unfortunately FP2 looks like it's going to be an ambitious failure in terms of trying to blaze new ground. It's possible it will be more mainstream/commercially successful, but with how much of the worldbuilding is getting thrown out the window I'm skeptical of it being interesting. I'll see what the full release in July looks like, but I expect to pass on it.
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Apr 19, 2024 13:34
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Groetgaffel posted:I'm convinced that the real meat of Frostpunk 2 is going to be in the story mode. Just like the first game. Based on what? Utopia Builder is what they showed the press initially and it's also what is in the beta. It could have been anything, but that's how they chose to introduce the game. Combined with how FP1 post-release development went, I think Endless/Utopia is what they are focusing on. If it's not, they're doing a real good job of hiding their intentions. Thomas Paine posted:What makes you think they're ditching a bunch of the worldbuilding. Dirk the Average posted:I suspect the different colonies are going to make things very interesting (as they are their own map, I suspect we will be managing multiple cities and transport routes), Worldbuilding may not have been the most accurate term to use. The whole gravitas/core of the setting is undermined by the changes being made, like Colonies for example. My perspective is the franchise is moving to a situation where it's trying to be a bunch of different things that don't fit together. Frostpunk 1 Tagline: The City Must Survive. Similarly, Frostpunk 2: The City Must Not Fall. That made sense in Frostpunk 1, though less so as more expansions came out. 'The last city on earth' ... then we found out it wasn't, but Tesla City failed, Winterhome, etc. Human civilization, at least to the limited extent the lore is known, was on the line. Now? Well, who cares if the city falls, the people can just move somewhere else not that far away and at worst have a somewhat reduced standard of living. Survival of humanity/civilization is no longer on the table. It's also not a grand strategy game in the sense of Civ or whatever where you're competing with other civilizations in a cage match for supremacy. It's more like, in a setting sense, something like Cities Skylines only with worse conditions/different tech, and a focus on the city succeeding for the sake of the people rather than just designing what you want, but again it really doesn't matter if the city succeeds in the grand scheme anymore so why do we care if the city falls or not? Basically just the whole outpost/colony/whatever else approach eliminates the urgency and importance of what you're doing in the city. It just doesn't matter much anymore, which takes a lot of the weight away from the various moral conundrums/societal breakdown emphasis that distinguished Frostpunk from just another 'find the meta strategy' builder game.
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Apr 20, 2024 21:08
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SlothfulCobra posted:The steam generator colonies were made up north where it was already colder than the rest of the world for some reason, so it seems vaguely plausible that the rest of the world could've put something together. Per the devs, the rest of the world in general, and specifically warmer areas had it worse off. A couple reasons for that; the Great Frost made it just as cold everywhere (scientifically impossible, but that's a detail). Another is that populations and wildlife were not as adapted to colder weather in those areas. People tried going there first, flooded them with refugees, they were less prepared ... you have to fill in the blanks from there but basically it didn't go well. The generators in the north are definitely a bright spot in the lore. Not the only places where people survived at all, but they had better success than the rest of humanity did. In terms of the 'utopia' name ... Utopia Builder = the new endless mode. DirktheAverage posted:There's plenty on the map to sustain the population for a long while, but it's worth noting that your population continues to increase over time (unlike the first Frostpunk), and so that demand created by escalating growth is going to be a problem that needs solving. Sure, but it doesn't have to be solved by the people in your city. It just has to be solved in general. One could argue that the city falling would actually help in that respect, since there'd be a lot fewer mouths to feed. SlothfulCobra posted:I think this time they've just realized that the people who like these kinds of games want a sandbox mode and releasing without one was a mistake in the original. It depends on what you mean by 'this kind of game'. Sandbox is inherently contradictory to the core mechanics of Frostpunk 1, very much a round peg square hole kind of thing. Something had to give. Groetgaffel posted:I suppose it's technically possible that they decide to abandon the strong story focus that was the core of the first game, but that seems extremely stupid and unlikely. I operate under the mindset that when somebody tells you what they are doing, you should believe them. It's kind of like how a number of people assumed that you'd be able to place your own buildings, see citizen details, etc. even though it was clear the game wasn't going in that direction from the early marketing. There's definitely going to be story aspects, but as one example quote: October 2023 Preview from IGN posted:The demo I saw was focused solely on the freeplay mode called “Utopia Builder,” so any details of the dedicated story mode remain a mystery, but after seeing the fascinating new direction they’re taking that focuses on politics, faction management, and greatly expanded building, I’m already extremely excited to don my winter jacket and dive back into a fresh new layer of apocalyptic snow. There was quite a bit about the political system/factions in the writeup. As I said before, if the main focus is the story then they are doing a great job of hiding it, because what they are talking about does not include that as a focus point at all. I guess we'll see in July.
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Apr 21, 2024 03:21
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QuarkJets posted:Have they said that there is going to be less emphasis on story? I don't recall seeing that anywhere In those words explicitly, no. By their actions, yes.
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Apr 21, 2024 17:53
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There is some serious crossing wires going on here. Trying to clarify one more time: - I never said there wasn't a story mode. I did say there's less emphasis on it, and they are clearly and intentionally emphasizing other aspects of the game. Dirk Average posted:The demo that we had is light on story content in the same way that the sandbox in Frostpunk is light on story content. They're the same game mode, and we only have access to a fraction of the factions and mechanics that will be available (you can see many other factions in the game setup screen, greyed out on the bottom of the UI, and later techs and laws are greyed out in their respective UIs or explicitly said to be locked for the demo). Sure all of this is true. It's also true that Frostpunk 1 also had a sandbox/endless mode eventually so that's not a 'new change to emphasize' and yet that's what they chose to lead with in terms of most of the dev statements, the press build last year, and the public beta. My point is that those actions tell us what 11bit thinks is most important. There definitely will still be a story mode, and yes of course lots of features are turned off in the beta, that's known. I'm not saying at all that the beta shows us everything or that there's not going to be a story. At the same time it's evident to me that the story is not as important as it was in Frostpunk 1. It literally can't be from what we've seen of the mechanics themselves.
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Apr 22, 2024 01:30
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