|
Tom_Holsinger -> RE: Armada 2526:updates,expansions,and sequels.Tell the company your wish list. (12/1/2009 6:24:10 AM)
|
My priority fixes are to humans and bureaucracy.
the Humans
I very much disagree with Bob's version of the Humans in the introductory scenarios. While I agree it is necessary to use the Humans as the default empire for those, his saddling of the humans with major unrest penalties is counterproductive. Playing humans with such penalties is just no fun, and seriously impairs pacing.
The constant money and unrest problems in playing humans is flat out annoying, plus it dramatically inhibits players from doing anything risky, and therefore interesting. The money and unrest woes which plague human empires force a crabbed, cautious and slow style of play in the very introductory scenarios which are critical to winning players' interest in the game.
My beef here concerns marketing. The introductory scenarios are supposed to convince new players to continue playing as well as ease them over the learning curve. All new players absolutely, positively, will start turn-based space 4x games playing as the humans.
It is just deadly to use the single most frustrating to play race in the game as the vehicle to convince newbies to continue with the game. Just about any other selection of a negative to balance the humans' positives would have been better.
I repeat, this is about marketing. Good marketing means catering to the wishes and preconceptions of the customers. Customers want to have a good time. If they have a good time playing the game's introductory scenarios, they will want to play more, and will recommend the game to their friends. If they don't, they won't.
Successful marketing here requires "catering to the wishes and preconceptions of the customers", WHATEVER THOSE ARE, good bad or indifferent. Players aren't bad because they dislike being frustrated and annoyed. A game is unsuccessful if it frustrates and annoys players, particularly its initial players.
It is essential in marketing these games to not unnecessarily frustrate and annoy customers in the introductory scenarios. Armada 2526 hits them in the face with the single most frustrating and annoying race in the whole game as the race which is their first empire in the game.
That has to change, and the sooner the better. I cannot urge strongly enough that the present unrest penalty for humans be reduced or, better, entirely eliminated in the next patch. What other penalty is imposed on them, to balance their positive attributes, is far less important than that the unrest penalty be eliminated.
I also suggest a new bonus for the humans which caters to the preconceptions of this game’s market, who are almost entirely Americans and members of the British Commonwealth. I suggest humans be given a new bonus for ease in assimilating the populations of other races, including those taken by conquest. The Anglosphere justly prides itself on its unique assimilative ability relative to non-Anglo states. Play that up in this game, even if most humans on this world are more xenophobic. Wave the flag a bit.
Bureaucracy
It is insane to punish players for being successful, but that is what the present implementation of bureaucracy does. Bureaucracy goes up as empire size increases. This increased bureaucracy makes populations increasingly unhappy. Seriously unhappy populations suffer significant unrest, and angry ones revolt. The more successful a player is, the larger his empire tends to grow. The more it grows, the greater the bureaucracy level goes up, the unhappier the population gets, etc., until an empire falls apart from getting too big and successful. This is nuts.
Master of Orion III had bureaucracy increase all construction costs, including those of buildings on colonies. This was highly effective in giving smaller empires relative advantages and keeping bigger ones from easily overwhelming the game. It was wildly successful at extending duration of the “sweet spot” of relative power parity between player and AI empires during which interesting wars could be waged. Its only disadvantage was that it made it almost impossible to develop small colonies into big ones once an empire reached a given size, because the cost of constructing new buildings on new (and therefore poor) colonies was so high.
I would change the implementation of bureaucracy in Armada 2526 to be more like that in MOO3. It should not affect happiness. It should instead act as a multiplier of ship & military construction costs, but not Structure costs.
|
|
|
|
