Post by beuns on May 19, 2014 23:57:28 GMT -5
Hi fellow alpha and dear devellopers 
Like I said in another thread, a clumsy surgeon has made me stay for a too long time at the hospital so I hadn't raelly had time to participate as much as I would have like to the great discussions on the forum. Still I played every version of the game that have been released so far and more or less read as much post on the forum as I can with an unreliable 3G. All this introduction is meant to 1) apologize for not being as active as I wanted to and 2) apologize in advance for all my spelling and grammar mistakes due to one handed typing and a lot of pain killer in my blood.
So here I start :
WOW !! What a difference since the first release !
When I first lanched the game and play for about 30 mins, I thought :"ok, I don't really like 4X that is probaly why I don't seem to go anywhere in this game. But it's a TB game, it's probably hard to master" (Come on ! We all know that TB games ARE hard to master and that's why we keep playing them
). So I keep playing and even after I saw the video and YouTube I was still unable to go anywhere and nearly put the game aside and start a new CyberKinght out of frustration ( ). I started another 4X game instead and yet as soon as I saw a Xeno, I was doomed (bad economy and not enough reactivity or preparation of reaction)
And then phase 2 came out...and the light with it. The game look like I can do something to compete with the Xenos. But quickly I discovered that I was still far behond the power of destruction and colonization of the Xenos. I tried a lot of different style of game to understand what would help, agresivily researching for invasion module led me to send a invasion ship with a strong escort and a nearly dead economy to a Xeno planet...and I died in a matter of mere 10 or 15 turns (it seems that this game turned nightmare and that my brain want erase it from my memory ). I tried to build very slowly to be economicaly ready for the Xeno wave that will surely come and stay on my first 3 planets for a long time to build a really good economy and...get kill even faster because I hadn't enough ship to resist and waaaaay not enough world able to build new ship as fast as the Xenos destroyed them (and I couldn't figure why my economy fell so quickly until recently when I read the post where Cory Trese explain that destroyed ships and planets drag the economy down due to workers mourning their loss). So I start a sniper in brutal to compare the frustration and when a Los V thug killed him, I got back to 4X ( )
As the game is now, a lot of my early mistakes are obvious to me and I don't do them again and even if I'm far from having won any game, I can whistand a Xeno attack and even start to retaliate (sometime... ).
So, to conclude : a lot of the game has change and it feels easier to play but still very hard to master. Apart from some minor problems (unability to pause any resarch/build/treaty for example...) I would say that my main problem is to reach the point where I'm strong enough to try getting after the Xenos. In fact, in my very first game, I couldn't figure how I would won and it took me a long time to understand that point. As a very novice player of 4X game, I had the greater difficulty to find the right pace of expansion and, since I lost any game I started atm, I should say that I'm still strugling to do so... To me (and it's really only my opinion) even on easy the game is too hard to feel...masterable ? (I don't if that's a correct word...but you get my point) to me, after some defeat, I should get a good idea of what I did wrong and have chance to make it right the next time (like taking a commision too far in AoP and getting kill by your own crew). From my noob point of view, there is too much parameter to take into account so the game is far from intuitive. A clearer way to know the outcome of actions would really help (I mean : "if I send my colony ship on this planet, I will proably have to prepare my economy to cope with a lot of fast building to shelter the pop on it and since it will be long, I sould be prepare to a loss of income due to morale getting down and staying down until I can manage a festival and after that...You see what I mean ?)
Don't mistake me : I really like the game and the frustration is a good way to try harder the next game. I just want to feel closer to victory more often.
Sorry for the wall of text but I was very late (and still am...) thanks everyone who have read it to the end
Like I said in another thread, a clumsy surgeon has made me stay for a too long time at the hospital so I hadn't raelly had time to participate as much as I would have like to the great discussions on the forum. Still I played every version of the game that have been released so far and more or less read as much post on the forum as I can with an unreliable 3G. All this introduction is meant to 1) apologize for not being as active as I wanted to and 2) apologize in advance for all my spelling and grammar mistakes due to one handed typing and a lot of pain killer in my blood.
So here I start :
WOW !! What a difference since the first release !
When I first lanched the game and play for about 30 mins, I thought :"ok, I don't really like 4X that is probaly why I don't seem to go anywhere in this game. But it's a TB game, it's probably hard to master" (Come on ! We all know that TB games ARE hard to master and that's why we keep playing them
). So I keep playing and even after I saw the video and YouTube I was still unable to go anywhere and nearly put the game aside and start a new CyberKinght out of frustration ( ). I started another 4X game instead and yet as soon as I saw a Xeno, I was doomed (bad economy and not enough reactivity or preparation of reaction)And then phase 2 came out...and the light with it. The game look like I can do something to compete with the Xenos. But quickly I discovered that I was still far behond the power of destruction and colonization of the Xenos. I tried a lot of different style of game to understand what would help, agresivily researching for invasion module led me to send a invasion ship with a strong escort and a nearly dead economy to a Xeno planet...and I died in a matter of mere 10 or 15 turns (it seems that this game turned nightmare and that my brain want erase it from my memory
). I tried to build very slowly to be economicaly ready for the Xeno wave that will surely come and stay on my first 3 planets for a long time to build a really good economy and...get kill even faster because I hadn't enough ship to resist and waaaaay not enough world able to build new ship as fast as the Xenos destroyed them (and I couldn't figure why my economy fell so quickly until recently when I read the post where Cory Trese explain that destroyed ships and planets drag the economy down due to workers mourning their loss). So I start a sniper in brutal to compare the frustration and when a Los V thug killed him, I got back to 4X ( )As the game is now, a lot of my early mistakes are obvious to me and I don't do them again and even if I'm far from having won any game, I can whistand a Xeno attack and even start to retaliate (sometime...
).So, to conclude : a lot of the game has change and it feels easier to play but still very hard to master. Apart from some minor problems (unability to pause any resarch/build/treaty for example...) I would say that my main problem is to reach the point where I'm strong enough to try getting after the Xenos. In fact, in my very first game, I couldn't figure how I would won and it took me a long time to understand that point. As a very novice player of 4X game, I had the greater difficulty to find the right pace of expansion and, since I lost any game I started atm, I should say that I'm still strugling to do so... To me (and it's really only my opinion) even on easy the game is too hard to feel...masterable ? (I don't if that's a correct word...but you get my point) to me, after some defeat, I should get a good idea of what I did wrong and have chance to make it right the next time (like taking a commision too far in AoP and getting kill by your own crew). From my noob point of view, there is too much parameter to take into account so the game is far from intuitive. A clearer way to know the outcome of actions would really help (I mean : "if I send my colony ship on this planet, I will proably have to prepare my economy to cope with a lot of fast building to shelter the pop on it and since it will be long, I sould be prepare to a loss of income due to morale getting down and staying down until I can manage a festival and after that...You see what I mean ?)
Don't mistake me : I really like the game and the frustration is a good way to try harder the next game. I just want to feel closer to victory more often.
Sorry for the wall of text but I was very late (and still am...) thanks everyone who have read it to the end
