Is it possible for any game to fail as hard as moo3 did ? ( I don't think it is )

[Oscot]

[inappropriate material deleted]

Can't comment on Rising Tide, but I didn't mind BE having highly similar factions, because factions differentiate based on tech tree and culture over the game - which fits with their theme.

A) Well, it still feels kinda cheap, doesn't it, that there is almost no difference between playing as Space China and playing as Space Brazil? They're exactly the same at the start, and (if they follow the same route) they're exactly the same at the end. It just seems wrong.

B) I wouldn't even say the different tech branches do feel different to play. Every game is still "Scrub for ideology points, build the Big Thing". It's just a question of whether the Big Thing is green, red, or yellow. It's basically got Mass Effect 3 Syndrome there.

C) And even if the three tech branches did feel different to play, there's only 3 of them. The BASE game of Civ V had, what, 16 countries? If your argument is "Ideology picks up the slack of faction differentiation from nation choice", then at best it picks it up at 3/16ths efficacy. And 3/16ths efficacy is not what I want to see from a game produced 5 years later.

With regards to Rising Tide, the main thing it did was flip the game's economy from "You are always poor, there are no good tile boosts and you always feel like you're playing Civ V but stuck in an 1100s economy" to "You are always rich, rush buy everything". And it added trade deals that are even more hilariously unbalanced than the new units.

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

Whoa there. I said Stellaris "can" be a genre re-defining classic. Not that it IS one. I say that because of Paradox's track record and experience. Certainly, not every game has the potential that Stellaris does. That's why I'm more excited about it than the ridiculous swarm of space 4X games being released or developed right now. explorminate.net has a great list--there are so many.

Right here: https://explorminate.net/known4xgames/

I doubt Stellaris will be a genre redefining game. CK2, EU4, and HoI are all good games, but they didn't really change the genre as a whole. Other game developers didn't look at them and say to themselves, hey that's awesome, we should make games like that. They are by their nature niche games, which I suspect Stellaris will be the same as well. WoW is, despite all its flaws, a genre redefining game because it actively shaped the gaming trends that we still witness to this day. Paradox games are great, but they're more of a genre of their own now.

 

[Fonz]

What was the problem with Gal Civ III?
(This is not a trick question: I agree that there WAS a problem, but I'm not exactly sure what the consensus view of said problem is).

I bought gal Civ 3 as a pre-order, and I really tried to get into it since 2 was amazing especially with mods. But it just have too many problems.

1. Constructor ship spam
I don't remember it being that bad in GC2, but in 3, if you want to play any map larger than medium and have resources above "rare", you're going to spend forever building starbases and clicking the "request constructor button". Except that the stock constructor is so inefficient, you end up having to design your own, which doesn't work with the button.

2. Horribly optimized
Compared to other games on the market, it runs like ass despite the graphics being 2013 level, and really star dock? The entire graphics menu in advanced is bloom, gel menu, AA, and resolution? 4 effin things and the resolution resets itself in the menu despite working correctly

3. AI cheats so damn much
Normally I'm fine with AI being given a little bonus to give them a somewhat level playing field, but in 3 it's so blatantly cheating and suiciding ships that it can replace in an instant. I can't believe for their pre-release streams (which NEVER, somehow, NEVER syncs voice and video. Yes paradox has some hilarious hijinks with no audio but at least THEY FIX IT IN YOUTUBE VIDS ) they actually talked about how "good" and "adaptive" their AI is.

4. Horrendous DLC policy
Mega events is a DLC for like 5$ CAD
The snathi race is a DLC for like 10$
Everything is DLC apparently

5. [no] innovation
Yay hexes instead of squares
Yay randomly generated planet surfaces
Yay govern wheel getting removed because it can be too easily exploited
And because it has no expansions like GC2, right now it's literally reskin with less stuff overall

Gal Civ 3 right now is literally unsalvageable, there's no real modding tools so all the "mods" are just factions and ships. And Stardock literally went off to do ashes of singularity, so I'm just going to dig a virtual hole, bury that , and never talk about it again.

[swearing removed]

 

[Oscot]

[inappropriate material deleted]

However, predicting whether a game is to become a genre-redefining classic is a different kind of prescience altogether than predicting whether Militarism OP Plz Nerf. The latter you can tell from playing, like, one game, or indeed looking at Spiritualism and realising that "those pros/cons don't match, they don't match at all!". The former, however, relies on many strange and intangible things, many of which don't have anything to do with Stellaris itself but rely on the strength of the other games that come out at the same time, or indeed after it does.

But I'm going to take my own advice for once. Since I think that hurrrrr, you can't knowwwww, me squabbling about it now is ridiculous.

Except that the stock constructor is so inefficient, you end up having to design your own, which doesn't work with the button.

This is the part I agree with most. Gal Civ III's auto-designer is the most retarded auto-designer I have ever seen.

 

[apoc527]

I doubt Stellaris will be a genre redefining game. CK2, EU4, and HoI are all good games, but they didn't really change the genre as a whole. Other game developers didn't look at them and say to themselves, hey that's awesome, we should make games like that. They are by their nature niche games, which I suspect Stellaris will be the same as well. WoW is, despite all its flaws, a genre redefining game because it actively shaped the gaming trends that we still witness to this day. Paradox games are great, but they're more of a genre of their own now.

Obviously I disagree. Granted, it will be tough because of the vast number of space 4X games hitting the market, including some "big names" (MOO and Endless Space 2). But the very fact that PDX grand strategy has become its own genre and is quite popular on YouTube means that Stellaris, unlike others, has a ready audience. And as for genre-redefining, I think we ALL agree that the genre is in need of serious redefinition. Everything has been copying the MOO2 formula for decades and it's honestly stale. There's not much out there with Stellaris's scope and ambition.

We shall see...

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

Obviously I disagree. Granted, it will be tough because of the vast number of space 4X games hitting the market, including some "big names" (MOO and Endless Space 2). But the very fact that PDX grand strategy has become its own genre and is quite popular on YouTube means that Stellaris, unlike others, has a ready audience. And as for genre-redefining, I think we ALL agree that the genre is in need of serious redefinition. Everything has been copying the MOO2 formula for decades and it's honestly stale. There's not much out there with Stellaris's scope and ambition.

We shall see...

Well EVE online redefined what was and is possible with a 99% player driven MMO content game, but the MMO genre hasn't exactly picked it up and copied it to bits and pieces. Stellaris will undoubtedly be a unique game, but it takes more than that to be genre redefining, otherwise every snowflake design idea would become a "genre redefiner" simply for being different. And Stellaris' game design isn't even that out there, it's basically just combining the typical 4x gameplay with EU4 style combat. Procedurally generated worlds and races are also not a new idea, it was done years ago by Spore.

 

[Trithemius]

Emperor is almost perfectly balanced between the PC factions - depending on your strategy both Decados and Hazat have the same chance of winning, despite being on opposite sides of the board. The AI is too dumb to realize that they're not coming out on top of the deal if you trade your vote for the Imperial Fleet, and they never figure "hey, maybe I'd better throw the third office to someone else instead of this guy who's supporting me for one election."

That doesn't sound like balance to me! I never got to play much MP but I found it vastly harder with some factions than others due to starting planet geography.

I was also really confused about why factions didn't control their fief-worlds at the game start!

 

[Trithemius]

Wow, I should have done my research.

Space Empires I-V. Some were okay.
Reach for the Stars (the reboot) wasn't terrible. But not good.
Imperium Galactica 2 is actually a spiritual prequel to Stellaris.
VGA PLANETS. Nuff said.
The Pax Imperia series. I'm sure I played one of them.
Haegemonia (was this a 4X? I think it tried to be...)

And more. THis is fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_4X_video_games

I will say that this makes me appreciate MOO and MOO2. Those are TRUE classics insofar as everyone has played them.

Space Empires IV is pretty great. Lots of big concept stuff. SE V was very ambitious with some cool federation and migration stuff but was a bit of an overreach.

 

[Tareeq]

Or Battlecruiser SomethingSomething AD, where the only person expected this game to be good was Derek Smart! Derek Smart! Derek Smart! (wonder if this still works)

It only works on Twitter these days, but it does indeed summon him.

MoO3 and Black and White taught me never to trust the gaming press.
Black and White in particular taught me never to trust Peter Molyneux.
Warhammer Online taught me never to trust EA. It was going to be an improved Dark Age of Camelot, they promised. Poor Mythic. And poor Bioware.
Civ 5 taught me not to trust Sid Meier, or at least the semi-retired guy who goes by that name these day.

I was once very leery of buying Paradox games at release, but CK2 and EU4 more than redeemed for the ill will generated by some of the earlier games.

We'll know Paradox is over when they're purchased by EA or Activision.

 

[apoc527]

5. [No] innovation
Yay hexes instead of squares
Yay randomly generated planet surfaces
Yay govern wheel getting removed because it can be too easily exploited
And because it has no expansions like GC2, right now it's literally reskin with less stuff overall

In a word, this. This is why I feel like Stellaris has a legitimate chance to redefine a very stagnant genre desperately in need of a serious shake up.

 

[AndrewT]

Swearing is against the rules you all agreed to follow when you signed up here.

Inappropriate material and posts removed.

 

[Oscot]

In a word, this. This is why I feel like Stellaris has a legitimate chance to redefine a very stagnant genre desperately in need of a serious shake up.

But Stellaris has randomly generated planet surfaces, no govern wheel, and no expansions.
I don't know where you're going with this.

 

[Zqrfmb]

My thoughts on some of the games mentioned here:

Spore: It's simply not possible to make a game like that worth full retail price.

Sim City: Got it for $5 to play with a friend, realized that the whole region system didn't even work like I'd hoped it did

ME3: A damn good third-person shooter with some fun multiplayer. Shame about the last few missions, though.

Shogun 2 before Fall of the Samurai: desynced constnatly in multiplayer campaign, crashed constantly on my desktop, but my toaster of a laptop was fine with it
after fall of the samurai patch: multiplayer campagin worked, fun was had, my desktop could run it.
after me and a friend trying to mod shogun 2: suddenly multiplayer no longer works and reinstalling doesn't help

Rome 2: I had such high hopes. Turns out the way to win every battle ever against AI is infantry backed by balista. Also the MP was never stable, and it was just bad in general. So bad I'm only looking at TW: Warhammer because it looks to be something completely different from former vanilla TW games

Cities Skylines: Obviously not a flop or a bad game, but I ended up disappointed after getting it because I learned I'm not actually a fan of city-builders and I fell for the hype for a genre I didn't even care about

 

[apoc527]

But Stellaris has randomly generated planet surfaces, no govern wheel, and no expansions.
I don't know where you're going with this.

It's hard to tell what kind of experience you have with PDX games since you either don't own any or haven't linked your account to Steam. But basically, Stellaris has many mechanisms never before seen in a space 4X game. In particular, the Paradox-style real-time-pause game play (which measures time in actual days, not abstract "real time" like StarCraft), complex, formula-driven diplomacy based off a lot of DETAIL (the detail is the important part), and the sheer number of potential empires in the galaxy.

For my money, EUIV in space is genre re-defining because after playing a ton of Civ V and discovering EU IV, EUIV redefined "strategy game" for me. I'm sure I'm not alone. That's why there are so many YouTubers playing EUIV and CK2 still, years after their releases.

 

[RGN-JohnSnow]

XRebith the game that burned me the hardest in the past couple of years

 

[The Village Idi]

I kinda liked MoO3 it had some interesting concepts for its time I thought. I think due to it being compared to the beloved MoO2 it gets more negative reaction than if it was a separate IP.

The only 4x I played that has topped MoO2 for me is SotS I, it had some issues especially at launch but it is definitely my favorite.

SotS II was such a crushing disappointment that I lost a lot of faith in Paradox and it has taken several years for them to regain it.

ME3 had that ending that invalidated an entire series, thinking about it I would think that would be almost impossible to do by accident but there is no good reason for them to do it on purpose.

In the end I would have to say SotS II is easily the biggest fail for me personally followed by ME3.

 

[Zoinker]

And Birth of the Federation. Isn't that the Star Trek 4X that was surprisingly decent?

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Birth of the Federation was actually a bit of a letdown for me back in the day, though that's mostly due to me being a young naïve megatrekkie who'd managed to get himself massively hyped up.

Still, it was riddled with bugs and only managed a couple of patches before Microprose got liquidated. But worst of all it suffered massive memory leak problems that made it virtually unplayable late game. Even without the bugs I felt it was simply far too tedious and heavy on the micromanagement. Fully developing a new star system to match your homeworld usually took dozens of turns, sometimes over 100 if it was big enough, especially late-game when all production structure types (there were 5 of them) had to be upgraded 7-8 times. And that's if you're doing it manually instead of using the abyssmally stupid autobuild feature.

Today, though, there's a surprisingly active modding community still thriving so with a bit of tweaking you can actually enjoy the game.

 

[Oscot]

ME3 had that ending that invalidated an entire series, thinking about it I would think that would be almost impossible to do by accident but there is no good reason for them to do it on purpose.

In the end I would have to say SotS II is easily the biggest fail for me personally followed by ME3.

I actually think everyone is needlessly hard on ME3.
Yes, then ending was written by a retarded monkey, but if we temporarily disregard the last 10 minutes of the three-game experience from our brains, suddenly it's back to being the decade's best quasi-RPG.
Even to me it seems a bit harsh to take a series that's 99% best-in-genre, add on 1% oh-god-whyyyyyyy, and then proclaim the whole thing to be oh-god-whyyyyyyy.

It's not even the ending that pissed me off most with ME3. It's that I messed up Tali, and not in the good way.

 

[SDSkinner]

• StarDrive 2

It shipped with conquer as the only way to win the game. Don't make a game with just one person.

• Distant Worlds: Universe

A wonderful space opera sim that has the slight flaw of being nearly impossible to figure out how to conquer planets. How exactly do I load up my transports with soldiers and get them to attack? Because apparently that is slightly bugged.

• Star Ruler 2 (am I making this up?)

A good, but weird game. Innovative, different from everything else. Think like EU4- very boardgamey where the diplomacy system runs on drawing cards, development runs on collecting planet resources and war is actually pretty awesome.

 

[hsuzy1987]

Yes, then ending was written by a retarded monkey,

It was less about a retarded monkey rather than a cocky and overconfident one. Going unilateral when you have a team of pretty good writers and suddenly springing your 'artistic' vision on them isn't good creative practice.