n01487477
Posts: 4779
Joined: 2/21/2006 Status: offline
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ORIGINAL: Saturn V quote:
ORIGINAL: n01487477 quote:
ORIGINAL: Krasny 1. Having an actual opponent that's trying to beat you. Commies make great bad guys. Although not in the last Indiana Jones movie. I saw that if this initial game is successful they may do that. Although the game is engaging at present and we still haven't seen the full game yet, I still think this design decision may prove to be costly though. Maybe I'm just used to competition and BARIS. Yeah, that's exactly the thing I pointed out in the thread I started a little while back. I think the lack of a direct competition, and the strategic variation and choices involved in that, are a problem. I had a hard time seeing how competing against nothing but an artificially imposed budget restriction and time deadline would be anywhere near as interesting as matching moves with an opponent while also battling budget issues. It seems I was not the only one to have this concern. Yeah I posted this a while ago, so we're on the same page here - http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=3370121 I don't want to go too negative yet, but I have to agree so far. Maybe tension will be created with some good ideas and thoughts and I'd certainly agree with your post below. I was actually going to suggest that the animations should be allowed to be turned off / fast forwarded or augmented by a text dialogue or dials / warning buttons. But seeing as your solution is so much better with a climbing and falling graphic - I'd fully support that. This one change would provide so much more to the game than the MB of graphics so far. Sure we haven't seen the error messages yet, but I should feel like I'm sitting in Mission Control with all the info flowing in (Like in Apollo 13 with the board of data and people calling out "go flight!" ;-)) and the tension rising rather than looking at points on a circular graphic. Even as an extension, allowing me to get more involved in that "go - no-go" process would be nice. quote:
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I am happy to live with the graphics and music as they are though. Just not that the graphics should dictate the game. After reading some of the development background it really does seem as if the needs of the animations was what was driving the game design. And that is just a bad idea IMO. I'll be brutally honest: I really don't care about the animations. I think they're the least important part of the game. I mean, really, after you've seen the same animation for the same mission in your tenth play through of the game, do you really want to see them again? When I played BARIS, the grainy video were neat the first few times, but after that, when a mission was going on, I ignored them. My eyes were instead glued to the little graph at the bottom, as I sweated out whether the green bar would edge into red on each mission step. I think I'd feel the same way about SPM's animations, regardless of how well made they are and how nice they look. They are secondary to the main game play IMO. When I think of what could have been done with an updated race to the Moon motif, with all the depth of information that's come out about the Soviet lunar program, I think a game on that theme could have offered the player a strategic experience just as deep and engrossing as any of the many war games Matrix has on offer. But for whatever reason SPM was aimed in a different direction. That's the developers' prerogative, certainly, I'm just not sure it's enough to make me want to be a part of it. I had been planning on joining the EAP, but now I'm not sure I will. (One can add to the foregoing the talk in other threads about the multi-platform nature of the game is impacting its PC version.) I think that it is a little too early to say where this will go, but if the Dev makes some changes and is willing to listen to the community and has enough time to do it then I'd say come and get involved. 2 months seems like a short time to full release and I think there is much more to do here. I'd like to see what he does to alleviate some of our concerns and maybe a plan of action that is well thought through. It may be too late to have a "Race" mechanic without going back to the drawing board, but if he can create tension and gameplay though other mechanics (not just budget / time) then this may work well enough. So, maybe a wait and see approach might be good until we see how Ignacio and Ian react to the proposals of game play change.
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