Post by huckleberry on Oct 7, 2014 9:29:38 GMT -5
Cory,
As always thanks for taking the time to evaluate our opinions. I completely agree that I don’t want the faction relations disconnected from other game events, and I almost wasn’t going post my third point. What I am trying to avoid is the frustration at things like early game before you have expanded beyond three planets, and already getting spy and solar wars with no real understanding of why. It feels very luck driven and you almost feel better of restarting because you know it will be a heck a long time before you even have the option to run the correct political event. I also can get annoyed when I am already losing money trying to keep the breed-like-rabbits planets happy while fending off the xenos, only to see income plummet because of an internal war starting for unknown reasons and then not having the funds to even try to fix things. It does feel like by ending solar wars with a xeno invasion you have already partially addressed this issue though.
Really I think this is more of reinforcement of my first point, if we can see if other things like planet counts, palaces, fleet size, moral or total spice have an impact then that would help mitigate this feeling of helplessness. Even some little indicator on cause of events like “ambassador x sneezed on Steel’s head honcho” to indicate it was random, or “the slums of thalos Prime are overpopulated, we need room to expand” to indicate thalos is envious of a faster growing neighbor would go a long way to add flavor while pointing us in the right direction.
Again don’t take this as a critique to reinvent the game. Personally I tend to focus on trying to build my utopian universe and less on fighting xenos and I love that the relations seem to reflect how well I am doing at building a balanced and happy galaxy. What I am trying to describe is where negative relations making a bad situation worse leading to people quitting prematurely. I have probably already dragged on too much about this, you guys always do a nice job of finding that balance of making a game challenging without discouraging players.
As always thanks for taking the time to evaluate our opinions. I completely agree that I don’t want the faction relations disconnected from other game events, and I almost wasn’t going post my third point. What I am trying to avoid is the frustration at things like early game before you have expanded beyond three planets, and already getting spy and solar wars with no real understanding of why. It feels very luck driven and you almost feel better of restarting because you know it will be a heck a long time before you even have the option to run the correct political event. I also can get annoyed when I am already losing money trying to keep the breed-like-rabbits planets happy while fending off the xenos, only to see income plummet because of an internal war starting for unknown reasons and then not having the funds to even try to fix things. It does feel like by ending solar wars with a xeno invasion you have already partially addressed this issue though.
Really I think this is more of reinforcement of my first point, if we can see if other things like planet counts, palaces, fleet size, moral or total spice have an impact then that would help mitigate this feeling of helplessness. Even some little indicator on cause of events like “ambassador x sneezed on Steel’s head honcho” to indicate it was random, or “the slums of thalos Prime are overpopulated, we need room to expand” to indicate thalos is envious of a faster growing neighbor would go a long way to add flavor while pointing us in the right direction.
Again don’t take this as a critique to reinvent the game. Personally I tend to focus on trying to build my utopian universe and less on fighting xenos and I love that the relations seem to reflect how well I am doing at building a balanced and happy galaxy. What I am trying to describe is where negative relations making a bad situation worse leading to people quitting prematurely. I have probably already dragged on too much about this, you guys always do a nice job of finding that balance of making a game challenging without discouraging players.
