Yea thank you Devs for making the customer "DO IT THEMSELVES" nothing like the customer having to do it themselves im just glad i got on the forum to learn that we could even do it what about all the other customers who do not know about it.....OPPS yea that was great marketabilitysome of us follow the crowds and others pave the way. I think its going to be a great game but why not include sandbox mode in the final product rather then to tell the customers " Meh if you want to play sandbox mode you can do it yourself"? Why would you want to limit yourself like that like i said before the goal is to accommodate gameplay not restrict it.
What ? Change a variable ? Blimey if that's "too much like hard work" for you, then don't do it.
Having said that ;
The "black swan" historical accuracy argument against a sandbox mode is pretty weak. In real life I didn't run the East India Company..or a competitor to it. I wasn't alive you see. Historical accuracy is immediately compromised, and every move I make changes the accuracy further. In fact the game can no more model true historical accuracy than it can send a walrus to another galaxy using a space ship made of fried eggs and mash potato.
Many games in the which set out to model strategic/financial ideas are set "in this place, and at this time " (Thanks Terry Pratchett for that great line) I can play Port Royale I or II, Patrician, Pirates, Railroad Tycoon, Any Chris Sawyer game, hell any game I can think of Football Manager, Out of the Park Baseball, Cricket Captain...
I can't think of one game that models current of historical dealings in an adventure/financial setting that DOESN'T allow me to carry on indefinately. When I own every Hanns port in Patrician III..or my great great great gerat great great great Grandson is still head of a thriving empire in The Guild II i don't think "Well blow me down, someone should have invented the telephone by now" I wouldn't be trying to get to be Mayor or this town.. I should be investing in the "dot com" revolution..it is 1997 after all. but no.. I dont..why ?
Because it's a game...I have ALREADY SUSPENDED MY DISBELIEF. If the games intention was to ever model history accurately..IT FAILED..no game can model anything other than the smallest aspects of history, with more than the thinest veneer of accuracy.
To claim that compromising history is a reason to miss out some pretty apparent "must have" features is not a particularly well reasoned argument.
But I have a concern, and that is that the game itself is designed in such a way that the logic / maths fails or becomes unplayable after a certain set of criteria is met. Perhpas there is no-one left to trade with (just an "off the top of my head" example of what might happen).
Championship Manager did this 10 + years ago. You won everything. Premiership, FA Cup, League Cup, Europe..but the games logic demanded progress. For some reason the "Board of Directors" would try and set harder challenges..even if there were none left. You could not surpass your own benchmark (because it was not possible to do so) and so a season or two later you were sacked, despite being "perfect".
This doesn't happen any more, and was acknowledged as a bug by the dev's. The Guild has similar problems (not to put too fine a point on it, to keep going to have to commit incest in Guild I. or at least start dallyances with closely related cousins after about the 5th or 6th generation)
But the idea of continuous play is there.
Maybe the Devs have reaised that some game constraints will make in unenjoyable in the long term without some delicate game balancing. So made the feature "available but not supported" which seems to be the case.
If the game is a set of "do this then do that missions" then I have no interest in it. If it pretends to be free form, but in reality requires that you perform large portions of the game in a certain way to succeed, then I will have no interest in it.
I look forward to some (long term player) reviews.
The short term reviews will tell us whether the code is stable. The long term reviews will tell us whether the game is addictive, long lasting and satisfying.
Roll on tomorrow. :wacko:
Scritty