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I'm super disappointed to see Amplitude going for a historically accurate setting. I'm a huge fan of theirs but might end up skipping this because I'm sick of playing games about history. World building is what they're best at so this feels like Michael Jordan retiring from basketball. I mean I get that they're mixing it up but... I don't want to play another strategy game about human cultures on Earth. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 18:39
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 19:39 |
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Panzeh posted:World building is lame and sci-fi/fantasy is a massive crutch. This is exactly the problem with Amplitude making a historical-inspired game. They've been all about world building above all else which has cultivated a certain fanbase for their games and now they're making a game with none of the core hook that drew that fanbase in. So they're going to lose out on some of their core fanbase like me because it doesn't have the things I buy their games for in it, and it's probably going to disappoint the wider audience because their games always end up a little bit on the shallow side but propped up by fantastic lore and creative, unique settings
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Aug 31, 2019 17:12
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Anno posted:AI programmer on PC strategy games has to be the most thankless job in game development. Most of the loudest people in the room (myself included) talk about it endlessly, but you can’t just make the AI good at the game, they have to be good at the game while still allowing the player to have fun and feel like they’re interacting with something of an organic opponent. And in doing so you just open up different kinds of exploits, so even when the AI is “good” when playing them straight up, you can break them in ways that look silly, and not doing so makes the AI a “cheater” instead for using information a player in the same situation wouldn’t have. It sounds impossible. I have a weird thing with games that are too hard for me to beat where I like to play on the hardest difficulties, but with some minor cheats to make it easier on myself. Kind of the reverse of what scaling the difficulty up usually does - the AI gets "better" and I'm the one who gets a few exploity cheats that aren't completely game-breaking to level the playing field. For example when I was learning how to play Total Warhammer I would slam the difficulty up to Legendary but start myself off with 100k gold, then make it a goal to keep a positive cash flow while having the safety net of that 100k gold to let me stay in the running if I made some poor choices. Personally I find it a good way to improve and learn how to play a game better - I can't regularly beat a Total Warhammer campaign on Legendary without cheating, but learning how to manage my economy against a much tougher opponent helped me regularly do it without the cheats on Hard and Very Hard. Anyway I mention it because I think an official developer-sanctioned version of this as an optional difficulty mode in games would be a cool way to ease up some of the stress you're talking about here - you can make an opponent that's strong enough to be a challenge for min/maxers without needing to worry about making it organically beatable for players who aren't stats nerds, while still letting more casual players have the experience of playing against that opponent and even being able to win. Maybe it's all a pipe dream and it would be far harder to design than I imagine, but I've always thought it was weird that most games handle difficulty by adjusting the enemy's power level, and very few handle it by adjusting the player's power level. e: As an example scenario for a 4x - playing against an AI that makes all of the right choices and doesn't predictably leave themselves open to dumb attacks to simulate human mistake-making - with my hope of winning being the fact that I'm the one showing up with an army worth more than my empire could feasibly produce and taking that AI by "surprise" after they calculated my army's value based on the unadjusted economy numbers and sent the rest of their forces elsewhere. I totally get that for some players that takes away from the sense of achievement and those more hardcore types are likely to concentrate around gaming forums like this, but as an optional mode I think it would be rad for the majority of the playerbase who might even feel achievement from conquering opponents that are too hard for them to have usually conquered - and in return, the hardcore types get their hardcore AI with no punches pulled to play against. Edit 2: To put it in other terms I think the new contemporary power fantasy for cool people is taking down established unbeatable opponents as an underdog with a bit of supernatural assistance (e.g. just look at the news, or superhero movies where a powerful superhero faces off against unbeatable odds) and the way difficulty is handled is a prime opportunity for experimenting with that in games. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Aug 10, 2021 |
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Aug 10, 2021 05:46
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dy. posted:The thing that worries me with this game is it’s like they came up with a bunch of really cool and innovative ideas but don’t really seem willing/able to either balance them or pare them down in a way that actually works mechanically. Might have fallen a little too in love with their own creation. This seems to be a common theme in Amplitude's 4x games. Endless Legend was a fluke in that it just clicked with itself and worked for the most part. That's why I've been so bummed out about this game since they first announced it - the thing that always made their 4x series worth playing for me was the really weird, bizarre and imaginative universes that set the backdrop for the kind-of-okay gameplay. I'll give them a lot of credit for always trying to do things a bit differently from everyone else but it doesn't seem like they know how to make "different" and "excellent" go hand in hand  edit: lmao I made almost this exact same post in here two years ago this month. I have completely forgotten about all things pre-covid I guess. deep dish peat moss posted:This is exactly the problem with Amplitude making a historical-inspired game. They've been all about world building above all else which has cultivated a certain fanbase for their games and now they're making a game with none of the core hook that drew that fanbase in. So they're going to lose out on some of their core fanbase like me because it doesn't have the things I buy their games for in it, and it's probably going to disappoint the wider audience because their games always end up a little bit on the shallow side but propped up by fantastic lore and creative, unique settings edit: For what it's worth I refund games on Steam a lot and in my experience you literally never need to enter a reason (no reason not to for the gamepass thing though). If you meet the "within 2 weeks and under 2 hours of play" criteria it's auto-approved, and preorders or anything else that's not playable are approved even beyond the 2 weeks. I would guess they have a 60 or 120 day cutoff period for refunds but afaik you can always get steam wallet funds if nothing else. I like using Paypal for Steam because there's no processing time on their refunds so I usually have the money back a few minutes after requesting a refund 
deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Aug 13, 2021 |
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Aug 13, 2021 03:29
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Sheesh, either I settled next to tiny horses or mammoths are bigger than I always thought
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Aug 18, 2021 10:20
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After an hour I have to say; love the visuals and presentation in this game but hate the game. I've restarted a few times now because I keep getting starts with no explorable sites in the early game and after 5 new starts where I didn't get to choose my neolithic culture because I was not finding animals, food, or influence sites at all and was the last one to pick, I've realized that this game is going to feel like poo poo all the way through because it's going to be a constant struggle to perfect your build orders and praying for RNG in order to just even have control over what culture you play as. It's like that early game rush in Civ to found the first religion so you can get one of the 1-2 good pantheon bonuses, except an entire game centered around that concept, and that just made me nope out incredibly hard and refund it Mozi posted:vvv That's wild, I had a completely different experience. That said I wasn't trying to play optimally but just to mess around and see how things develop, which is how I'd rather play a Civ-type game anyways I wasn't trying to play optimally either, I didn't even make it to the point of the game where you turn outposts into cities because on all 5 games I started even with 2-3 separate units running around exploring, I was always the last one to pick a neolithic culture because I literally could not find the exploration sites or animals I needed to get that first star  As someone who restarts in 4x games constantly I can tell I won't have fun with this one
deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Aug 18, 2021 |
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Aug 18, 2021 17:25
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 19:39 |
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To clarify, I was finding some of those sites but so infrequently that in every attempt, I was the last faction to get the first star and therefore I didn't get to choose my neolithic civ because all of the civs were claimed and I got defaulted to a single option. I already refunded the game but I'll try it out again when it's on sale for $15-20
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Aug 18, 2021 18:08
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