Master of Orion Remake ? :O

[Malakal]

so now you're complaining because the game has a feature which is too good?

I am complaining because the game is too good at playing without player doing anything. How is that a good design?

 

[RayF]

so now you're complaining because the game has a feature which is too good?

Any feature so good that it makes playing the game irrelevant is a feature that should not be in the game.

 

[whatevername]

That cat diplomats speech lines ..

Should've been "MEOW meow meow MEOW meeeeow " and the subtitles say "GIEF 100000 CAT FOODS NAO"

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i still see nothing about the game quality. all you can shout is "the game can play! i hate it! let me play! but i don't want to play because the game can play!".

 

[Luka-boy]

Shitload of screenshots:

Spoiler

That Psilon looks so happy

 

[Grotesque]

That Psilon looks so happy

seeing those screenshots I wanted to gouge my eyes out

 

[TigerKnee]

Christ man that Psilon just looks like shit.

I know the common insult is "too cartoony" but you know what, there are cartoons that look less shit than whatever they were going for when they designed that Psilon

 

[Average Manatee]

i still see nothing about the game quality. all you can shout is "the game can play! i hate it! let me play! but i don't want to play because the game can play!".

The game increased micromanagement by over 9000% with the assumption that you would automate most of it. It literally doesn't work as a game you play yourself, so you have to delegate parts to the AI. Naturally you should be delegating the parts the automation is good at and keeping the parts that the automation is bad at to yourself. What is the automation good at in MoO3? Turns out pretty much everything.

http://www.wargamespace.com/2014/05/05/geryk-analysis-master-of-orion-3/

This is a good link that explores what MoO3 was "meant" to be. Sounded like the plan was probably going to be a clusterfuck but instead they got cold feet, dropped their lofty ambitions and the result was even more of a clusterfuck.

That said, there's plenty of other things I can find wrong with MoO3 even during the very brief time I spent with it. The corridor-connected stars are completely fucking stupid, and the other AI empires and insanely timid to the point where its not only possible but probable to win without war unless you go looking for it. And does anyone for a second think that having 10 different ways to say the same thing diplomatically was a good idea?

The MOO1/MOO2 debate has to do with the acceptable level of micromanagement that works within a game. People have different tolerances for that, and "sliders vs. build queues" is a big part of that discussion.

Personally I like both, but MoO2's level of micromanagement is much better suited to a SP game while MoO1's quickness and simplicity is superior for MP games, so it's a shame that only MoO2 came with MP.

Sliders and build queues are both great. MoO2's problems aren't build queues, it's the managing of settlers in discreet thousands and needing to go to the colony screen to do that. If you could convert settler management in MoO2 back to sliders, keep the build queues, and make it all accessible without needing to load the colony screen, shit would be great. I'd pay for a remake that did that.

 

[Space Satan]

Alpha Centauri provided players with the most flexible automation system. You could assign governors according to your needs so bases would be automated and you shouldn't deal with production management of your empire that spanned half the planet and listed dozens of cities. including citizen allocation.
Civilization 4 reduced this flexibility to simple citizen allocation. But this was not as noticable because it featured extremely handy building and unit queue mechanics.
Civilization 5 had no automation at all, citizen allocation was broken beyond repair, could not even cope with Civ4. Had no automated buildings at all. You have to manage EVERYTHING. Every city had to be manually set to production. Queue was so cumbersome and badly implemented that it was easier to manually assign buildings and units than add them to queue. They could not even manage caravan system to be half-automated.

 

[RayF]

Any game that provides a system for automating part of the game has already failed at some level of design.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

The corridor-connected stars are completely fucking stupid, and the other AI empires and insanely timid to the point where its not only possible but probable to win without war unless you go looking for it. And does anyone for a second think that having 10 different ways to say the same thing diplomatically was a good idea?

you can travel outside starlanes. yes, it's much slower but when technology progresses and shit hits the fan you can be attacked from everywhere.

i read that article, all it says is that moo3 could have been a sort of europa 1400 clone but it turn out as a standard 4x.
so what?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Get an avatar for yourself, you stubborn idiot, and go play Moo3 without any mods. You'll see the problem in an hour.

 

[Space Satan]

Any game that provides a system for automating part of the game has already failed at some level of design.

You are a dumbfuck

 

[RayF]

You are a dumbfuck

haha!

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

go play Moo3 without any mods. You'll see the problem in an hour.

been there, done that.
so what? it's a game with a grand scope but not so good execution, i've seen worse, i liked worse, and anyway no game ever made me feel i was the head of a true star empire.
but this is not the point of this discussion. here we're hearing people saying "i wish this game had less automations because they are too good, i wish they weren't there so i could play, but even if you can turn them off i don't want to play anyway".

 

[RayF]

been there, done that.
so what? it's a game with a grand scope but not so good execution, i've seen worse, i liked worse, and anyway no game ever made me feel i was the head of a true star empire.
but this is not the point of this discussion. here we're hearing people saying "i wish this game had less automations because they are too good, i wish they weren't there so i could play, but even if you can turn them off i don't want to play anyway".

ok, that's not necessarily the point.

If there is an AI automation of a particular feature of the game, there are generally two basic outcomes:
1) The AI is worse than a player would be at micro-managing (the usual case). This creates a coercion on the player to turn the automation off and micro-manage the game himself. In fact, this is a very common lament of 4X players. Of course, it makes the game less enjoyable because THE ENTIRE PURPOSE of the automation was to remove micro-managing tedium.

2) The AI is better than a player would be. This creates a coercion on the player to use the automation because doing otherwise puts him at a disadvantage against the AI, which presumably uses the automation. Probably the only analogy to this I can think of are chess programs, which are highly optimized and play better than any human. There are no serious "player vs. computer" matches as a result of this imbalance.

The point is that creating features that are then automated almost invariably lead to a problem in play. Many players believe, as do I, that if there is a compelling reason to automate some feature in the game then that is most likely a feature that should not be in the game. Of course, no one is starting a crusade in the video game industry to "remove all automation from strategy games". It's just an opinion on what is a philosophical point on the ideas of proper game design.

 

[MRY]

The point is that creating features that are then automated almost invariably lead to a problem in play. Many players believe, as do I, that if there is a compelling reason to automate some feature in the game then that is most likely a feature that should not be in the game. Of course, no one is starting a crusade in the video game industry to "remove all automation from strategy games". It's just an opinion on what is a philosophical point on the ideas of proper game design.

A couple quick thoughts:

(1) You seem to be presuming turn-based games with infinite decisional/micromanagement time. Obviously this is a (small) subset of games. For every other kind of game, inferior automation is a totally legitimate way to say, "Where you don't pay attention, things won't go entirely to hell, but they won't go as well as you would like." A very basic example of this automation would be units in an RTS attacking when an enemy enters range.

(2) Even in a 4X, it seems to me that you could have non-consenual automation (akin to what is talked about the MOO3 link above), which would also work reasonably well with inferior automation. For example, you might limit the player to direct control over a single planet, while other planets are automated. In my opinion, this can be used effectively as the scope of the game scales up: in essence, when the game is about controlling a single planet, the unit of manipulation is small, but when the game is about controlling 100 planets, the unit of manipulation gets large. This would nicely represent the way real management works, as well as avoiding fiddliness. I think this could also be non-frustrating if the benefits of micromanagement began to diminish as things scaled up -- for example, if the extra 30 units of production you could get by obsessively max-minning were swamped by bonuses and so forth.

 

[RayF]

A couple quick thoughts:

(1) You seem to be presuming turn-based games with infinite decisional/micromanagement time. Obviously this is a (small) subset of games. For every other kind of game, inferior automation is a totally legitimate way to say, "Where you don't pay attention, things won't go entirely to hell, but they won't go as well as you would like." A very basic example of this automation would be units in an RTS attacking when an enemy enters range.

That is correct. I am speaking of TBS. For RTS games, there's a different dynamic in play. Thanks for pointing out that distinction.

(2) Even in a 4X, it seems to me that you could have non-consenual automation (akin to what is talked about the MOO3 link above), which would also work reasonably well with inferior automation. For example, you might limit the player to direct control over a single planet, while other planets are automated. In my opinion, this can be used effectively as the scope of the game scales up: in essence, when the game is about controlling a single planet, the unit of manipulation is small, but when the game is about controlling 100 planets, the unit of manipulation gets large. This would nicely represent the way real management works, as well as avoiding fiddliness. I think this could also be non-frustrating if the benefits of micromanagement began to diminish as things scaled up -- for example, if the extra 30 units of production you could get by obsessively max-minning were swamped by bonuses and so forth.

Yes, but we are back to the notion of game design. If the game designer knows that the game could reasonably scale up to 100 planets and suddenly shifting colonists is unbearable, then his role is to design the game in such a way that this kind of progression is workable. He could certainly choose to solve this problem by allowing the player to automate (i.e. stop participating in) certain parts of the game that do not scale well. But that is what mean when I say that the game design has failed at some level. Is there a way to design the game so that these actions scale without taking the player out of the decision-making process? That's ultimately the goal.

 

[Destroid]

I don't think the TBS/RTS distinction has much relevance for 4X games, all the real time 4X games allow you to pause the game and issue commands.

 

[MRY]

Yes, but we are back to the notion of game design. If the game designer knows that the game could reasonably scale up to 100 planets and suddenly shifting colonists is unbearable, then his role is to design the game in such a way that this kind of progression is workable. He could certainly choose to solve this problem by allowing the player to automate (i.e. stop participating in) certain parts of the game that do not scale well. But that is what mean when I say that the game design has failed at some level. Is there a way to design the game so that these actions scale without taking the player out of the decision-making process? That's ultimately the goal.

I think you're mistaken in thinking it is a problem. I think it can actually be a very rewarding feature of a game to have the player shift his focus to broader and broader scale as the game progress -- in fact, I think this is a pretty clever feat of game design, that kinds of choices the player is making shifts as the game goes on, rather than simply increasing the quantity of choices or the tokens he's employing in making those choices. I'm not a big fan of so-called "incremental" games (which are quite the rage in Flash portals at the moment), but if you look at some of the classics, like a dark room or Candy Box, they pull this off in a pretty fantastic way.

So I don't think automation is per se failure, though I think that a designer should be concerned if players want to automate things because they're tedious.

 

[GarfunkeL]

been there, done that.
so what? it's a game with a grand scope but not so good execution, i've seen worse, i liked worse, and anyway no game ever made me feel i was the head of a true star empire.
but this is not the point of this discussion. here we're hearing people saying "i wish this game had less automations because they are too good, i wish they weren't there so i could play, but even if you can turn them off i don't want to play anyway".

You're being obnoxious and obtuse, either because you're an autistic sperglord or you get a kick out of playing devil's advocate - I don't know which is worse. The problem is pretty clear to anyone who has actually played the game. It plays itself competently enough that the player doesn't have to do anything but even if you turn off all the automation, it doesn't really help - you're left moving groups of ships and fiddling with sliders, none of which seems to have an effect on anything. Eagerly awaiting your nonsensical reply where you still refuse to accept facts.

 

[RayF]

I think you're mistaken in thinking it is a problem. I think it can actually be a very rewarding feature of a game to have the player shift his focus to broader and broader scale as the game progress -- in fact, I think this is a pretty clever feat of game design, that kinds of choices the player is making shifts as the game goes on, rather than simply increasing the quantity of choices or the tokens he's employing in making those choices. I'm not a big fan of so-called "incremental" games (which are quite the rage in Flash portals at the moment), but if you look at some of the classics, like a dark room or Candy Box, they pull this off in a pretty fantastic way.

I understand what your saying, but that's still a slightly different case. In that one, the game changes at some point so that certain features which would become tedious are no longer part of the game.

For those games where automation becomes mandatory from that point on, then your point is exactly spot on. But if the automation can be disabled, then we are back to the player being coerced if he wants to maximize his play. MOO3, which is the game triggering this discussion, falls in the latter category.

 

[MRY]

I totally agree that automation can be a sign of flawed design, and that MOO3 is a tragic catastrophe. I just don't think that automation is always proof of design failure, that's all.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

You're being obnoxious and obtuse, either because you're an autistic sperglord or you get a kick out of playing devil's advocate - I don't know which is worse. The problem is pretty clear to anyone who has actually played the game. It plays itself competently enough that the player doesn't have to do anything but even if you turn off all the automation, it doesn't really help - you're left moving groups of ships and fiddling with sliders, none of which seems to have an effect on anything. Eagerly awaiting your nonsensical reply where you still refuse to accept facts.

listen, my dear faggotlord, i've always managed my regions manually, as the build orders on the most productive planets, and the outcome it's always been exactly what i expected. actually it's extremely important in the beginning to have some extremely focused planets which could provide most of the food/minerals/industry, and at the same time they have to be actively defended otherwise a single ship blockade could cripple an entire empire. of course when you have a hundred planets a new one, whatever it does, doesn't add much, and they can/have to be automated.
but this is not the point, my dear dickchocker, the point is:
-this game sucks because it plays by itself.
-actually you can turn off most if not all of the automation.
-doesn't matter because i don't want to play anyway because the game sucks because it plays by itself.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah, you're an autistic sperglord, thanks for confirming. I'll have more productive conversations with prosper.