RTS They Are Billions - steampunk/zombie RTS from Lords of Xulima dev

[Alienman]

Yeah, I'm there too

Like now, I just realized I have fucked over my campaign with the research I picked. I went for more military style stuff, improving defensible buildings and such. How would I know that all the mission would involve spamming houses and getting lots and lots of food with no relevance on how good defense you have...

So disappointed. Really don't feel like starting over.

Man, making a good campaign would be so damn easy. Make cool scripted missions with some story, make me build epic defenses and such. Instead I'm getting mocked by the emperor for even trying to expand the empire when it was his idea from the start. I guess that should have been a warning sign.



Just check the clip here, I have marked the time.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Thx for the impressions, I'll take another look in a year or so

 

[Elim]

The campaign is totally fucked and people on the Steam forums defend it. Just shows you how clueless these idiots are.
Such fun gameplay, spamming houses.

The normal mode, on the other hand, is pretty solid.

 

[Dickie]

Can't say I enjoy the mission design that much. Feels arbitrary as hell. Reach certain pop and destroy whatever target you have under a time limit. If you fail reaching the pop but destroyed whatever target you had, you lose and have to start over. I guess the emperor decides 380 colonists out of 400 just isn't worth it and bombards the settlement from the air or something. On my third mission like that now.

I want to build super defense, and then slowly mass a huge army for the push back in my own time dammit!

Did you try the tactic missions yet, with the hero? I don't know if there's any way to find the stuff you can interact with besides hovering the cursor on every single thing. I hope I'm missing something because it gets tedious as hell trying to find all the research points.

 

[thesheeep]

Can't say I enjoy the mission design that much. Feels arbitrary as hell. Reach certain pop and destroy whatever target you have under a time limit. If you fail reaching the pop but destroyed whatever target you had, you lose and have to start over. I guess the emperor decides 380 colonists out of 400 just isn't worth it and bombards the settlement from the air or something. On my third mission like that now.

I want to build super defense, and then slowly mass a huge army for the push back in my own time dammit!

Did you try the tactic missions yet, with the hero? I don't know if there's any way to find the stuff you can interact with besides hovering the cursor on every single thing. I hope I'm missing something because it gets tedious as hell trying to find all the research points.

Nope, you are supposed to pixel hunt. At least from what I can gather from other posts about this.
Yes, another one of these game mechanics that rightfully went the way of the Dodo

 

[Alienman]

Yep, you have to pixel hunt.

And I give up on the game, uninstalled. I'm feeling salt levels beyond normal for this release. The tech tree breaks the game more than I thought. Some missions are like playing challenge mode, but with your hands tied behind your back. Want a turret for defense? Fuck you, research it first you pleb. Have fun defending with 50 archers while expanding to meet arbitrary objective goals!

 

[Dickie]

I went and checked the Steam forums for this issue, and I found this thread.

Collectables blink only on accessible/easy difficulty as of latest patch?

Why do you consider this a difficulty/skill problem...It's a design problem. Stop making silly decisions and hiding them behind the difficulty banner.

Hero missions are already a joke, but now for convenience I should make them even less challenging just so I'm not stuck on a map for half an hour scanning to see whether a background asset is tagged as a collectable, while I press F4 to disable terrain elements?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/644930/discussions/0/1645418261862558442/

Apparently, it's a difficulty setting thing. Interesting.

 

[Parabalus]

I find the house spamming complaints weird, since you spam houses in survival as well.

I guess going for the 800 colonist mission without wooden houses or farms would suck though.

Ew, RTS with arbitrary time limits? Un-wishlisting.

Time limits in the odd mission are fine (if there's an actual reason for it), but in pretty much every mission?
Yeah, no thanks. There are so many ways to add challenge in a game like this, why resort to arbitrary shit like time limits?
I'm glad I didn't buy the game yet. There's a chance people are so upset about that nonsense that they'll change it, like they (apparently) did with having no gates for trains.

It makes sense here though, the base survival mode also has time limits.

 

[thesheeep]

Ew, RTS with arbitrary time limits? Un-wishlisting.

Time limits in the odd mission are fine (if there's an actual reason for it), but in pretty much every mission?
Yeah, no thanks. There are so many ways to add challenge in a game like this, why resort to arbitrary shit like time limits?
I'm glad I didn't buy the game yet. There's a chance people are so upset about that nonsense that they'll change it, like they (apparently) did with having no gates for trains.

It makes sense here though, the base survival mode also has time limits.

If I wanted to play a survival mode, I'd play a survival mode.
That's not what campaigns are for in RTS games. If all they do is just game mode X + story, they really shouldn't have bothered with a campaign.

Also, in survival if I'm not mistaken, there is only a timer insofar that the final horde will come then and if you survive, you win.
That's not even what happens in the campaign. In the campaign, if you don't have arbitrary stat X by time Y, you just lose, no matter how well you cleared the map. There's really no logic to it.

 

[Parabalus]

Ew, RTS with arbitrary time limits? Un-wishlisting.

Time limits in the odd mission are fine (if there's an actual reason for it), but in pretty much every mission?
Yeah, no thanks. There are so many ways to add challenge in a game like this, why resort to arbitrary shit like time limits?
I'm glad I didn't buy the game yet. There's a chance people are so upset about that nonsense that they'll change it, like they (apparently) did with having no gates for trains.

It makes sense here though, the base survival mode also has time limits.

If I wanted to play a survival mode, I'd play a survival mode.
That's not what campaigns are for in RTS games. If all they do is just game mode X + story, they really shouldn't have bothered with a campaign.

Also, in survival if I'm not mistaken, there is only a timer insofar that the final horde will come then and if you survive, you win.
That's not even what happens in the campaign. In the campaign, if you don't have arbitrary stat X by time Y, you just lose, no matter how well you cleared the map. There's really no logic to it.

I don't think the game makes any sense without time limits, you could just turtle and safely expand, that goes against the core formula.

FWIW the limits seem extremely generous, esp below Brutal.

 

[LESS T_T]

Recent reviews score is going into the realm of Mixed...

 

[Alienman]

The core formula is getting attacked by zombies and surviving, the time limit are a totally new thing. It doesn't exist in challenge, and story-wise it makes no sense in the campaign. Instead of arbitrary time limits to increase difficulty they could have made some difficult side quest on each map, like saving little Timmy trapped in a fridge in the corner of the map.

I did one more mission on easy just to satisfy my curiosity, and the missions seems to go on in the same way as it begun, just that the colonist requirement increases. Biggest req I have seen so far is 1000 pop. I get tired just thinking about it.

 

[thesheeep]

Ew, RTS with arbitrary time limits? Un-wishlisting.

Time limits in the odd mission are fine (if there's an actual reason for it), but in pretty much every mission?
Yeah, no thanks. There are so many ways to add challenge in a game like this, why resort to arbitrary shit like time limits?
I'm glad I didn't buy the game yet. There's a chance people are so upset about that nonsense that they'll change it, like they (apparently) did with having no gates for trains.

It makes sense here though, the base survival mode also has time limits.

If I wanted to play a survival mode, I'd play a survival mode.
That's not what campaigns are for in RTS games. If all they do is just game mode X + story, they really shouldn't have bothered with a campaign.

Also, in survival if I'm not mistaken, there is only a timer insofar that the final horde will come then and if you survive, you win.
That's not even what happens in the campaign. In the campaign, if you don't have arbitrary stat X by time Y, you just lose, no matter how well you cleared the map. There's really no logic to it.

I don't think the game makes any sense without time limits, you could just turtle and safely expand, that goes against the core formula.

The core formula of the survival mode is to build up and survive a growing threat. You don't need a time limit for that, it just happens "naturally". And the game doesn't just end when a timer reaches 0.
And that is only the survival mode. As I already said, an RTS campaign should be much more than just a single game mode X + story.

FWIW the limits seem extremely generous, esp below Brutal.

For veterans of the survival mode, maybe.
Many people, like myself, don't have too much interest in the survival mode and just waited for the campaign to come out and play some nice turtling RTS campaign. WITHOUT having to stare at a timer all the time.

Recent reviews score is going into the realm of Mixed...

Deservedly so.
I just hope they react and can turn it around.
Now it really shows what a stupid idea it was to develop a campaign in secret, obviously without knowing what people even wanted.
Maybe they did not realize that the campaign was for different people than those who just played survival nonstop? But even then, it's not really default survival mode but a new thing, so... I don't know, I'm mostly baffled.

 

[Parabalus]

The core formula is getting attacked by zombies and surviving, the time limit are a totally new thing. It doesn't exist in challenge, and story-wise it makes no sense in the campaign. Instead of arbitrary time limits to increase difficulty they could have made some difficult side quest on each map, like saving little Timmy trapped in a fridge in the corner of the map.

I did one more mission on easy just to satisfy my curiosity, and the missions seems to go on in the same way as it begun, just that the colonist requirement increases. Biggest req I have seen so far is 1000 pop. I get tired just thinking about it.

How is the final wave in survival mode not a time limit?

Psure the emperor being pissed is the in-game justification.

 

[Dickie]

The core formula of the survival mode is to build up and survive a growing threat. You don't need a time limit for that, it just happens "naturally". And the game doesn't just end when a timer reaches 0.
And that is only the survival mode. As I already said, an RTS campaign should be much more than just a single game mode X + story.

Hmm... I do think the missions might be more interesting if you had bigger and badder waves show up until you met the objective rather than just "do this thing in 30 days." Maybe they could explain it like 400 or 800 people can hold the fort down without you.

This would also make the threat seem a bit more dire. Clearing the map in 10 days and then building hunter's huts and tents for 20 days isn't super compelling and doesn't give you an idea that the zombies are much of a problem. Only the first mission I played even had any kind of waves assaulting your base. I think I played 3 or 4 of the non-hero missions.

 

[Alienman]

The core formula is getting attacked by zombies and surviving, the time limit are a totally new thing. It doesn't exist in challenge, and story-wise it makes no sense in the campaign. Instead of arbitrary time limits to increase difficulty they could have made some difficult side quest on each map, like saving little Timmy trapped in a fridge in the corner of the map.

I did one more mission on easy just to satisfy my curiosity, and the missions seems to go on in the same way as it begun, just that the colonist requirement increases. Biggest req I have seen so far is 1000 pop. I get tired just thinking about it.

How is the final wave in survival mode not a time limit?

Psure the emperor being pissed is the in-game justification.

Well, I guess, technically you are correct, the end swarm is the time limit. I mostly just don't understand why it is needed in the campaign, combined with the unending use of pop requirement on every mission and with the horde system on top. Just baffles my mind that this is what they came up with after two years.

 

[anvi]

 

[Parabalus]

The core formula is getting attacked by zombies and surviving, the time limit are a totally new thing. It doesn't exist in challenge, and story-wise it makes no sense in the campaign. Instead of arbitrary time limits to increase difficulty they could have made some difficult side quest on each map, like saving little Timmy trapped in a fridge in the corner of the map.

I did one more mission on easy just to satisfy my curiosity, and the missions seems to go on in the same way as it begun, just that the colonist requirement increases. Biggest req I have seen so far is 1000 pop. I get tired just thinking about it.

How is the final wave in survival mode not a time limit?

Psure the emperor being pissed is the in-game justification.

Well, I guess, technically you are correct, the end swarm is the time limit. I mostly just don't understand why it is needed in the campaign, combined with the unending use of pop requirement on every mission and with the horde system on top. Just baffles my mind that this is what they came up with after two years.

They prob should have scaled the pop requirements with the difficulty, like they do for the time limits.

Though the pop size is a bit of a tutorial, it's a good target to aim for. If it's a consistent problem to hit it you're prob not playing aggressively enough.

Recent reviews score is going into the realm of Mixed...

Like AoD or Battle Brothers after a sale, influx of new players .

 

[Agame]

Like AoD or Battle Brothers after a sale, influx of new players

You cant just blame "new players hurr", the campaign is a legitimately shit experience and they deserve some criticism. The fact they didnt EA at least the early part of the campaign is baffling, they could have avoided some of these problems with the user base play testing it.

 

[LESS T_T]

Yeah, I see a lot of negative reviews come from people who already played the game at least over 20 hours, 70 hours even.

 

[Parabalus]

There's butthurt about the campaign being bad (it's not stellar IMO), but there's quite a lot about the difficulty as well. They already reduced the default one in a patch.

 

[Agame]

And they are now censoring criticism on the Steam forum:

Spoiler

EDIT: Criticism towards their game is now also being censored as well. Their forum moderator is calling people impatient and new to RTS games, insulting them if they've only tried their game for 2 hours telling them to put more in (past the refund process) if they criticise it. What a mess.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/518880635545190452/590975894483632128/unknown.png

After watching their forum moderator get into arguments and now starting to remove and ban users who are critiquing their game, I sincerely regret supporting this developer in any way and heavily encourage people to avoid them.

Sad!

If only more devs were like Cleve, dont run away, fight your critics head on!

 

[anvi]

Banning people who say a game sucks is how things work now. I got banned from steam so much they muted my whole account.

 

[Alienman]

Banning people who say a game sucks is how things work now. I got banned from steam so much they muted my whole account.

Across the whole of Steam?

 

[Yosharian]

Banning people who say a game sucks is how things work now. I got banned from steam so much they muted my whole account.

Illuminating...