Master of Orion 3 - What Went Wrong? - Page 4

Kc7mxo · March 4, 2003, 11:52

I started playing civ1 in middle school. And It didn't take me very long before I understood how to play. Somehow I doubt I would have been able to figure out moo3 before I got too frustrated to bother back then.

Moo3 lacks accesibility. How am I supposed to get friends to play agame (let alone myself) that apparently takes between 10 to 20 hours of play to get the hang of, and isn't any fun while you're learning? The most likely result of trying would be ->

wilebill · March 4, 2003, 14:30

No Kc7mxo!

"The most likely result of trying would be ->

"
possibly with YOUR head in the starring role!

What you need here is the Tom Sawyer approach! Convince them not just anybody can whitewash the fence properly. Con them into begging for the opportunity to suffer ... er ... I mean learn! Use flattery! Make playing MOO3 seem elitist and snobbish! Grease them up with "getting there is all the fun" and "happiness must be earned."

Seriously, I have not played a strategy game since Civ I (which is why I replied) and learning MOO3 is not quite as bad as represented. I think the learning curve is more like six to eight hours at most (that's all it took a dolt newbie like myself) if you have a beginner's tutorial, such as is not supplied with the game and which has to be hunted down on the web.

As for being fun, is there a gamer who does not find the challenge all the fun?

I do agree that learning MOO3 could be a lot easier even than what it is and maybe after a couple or three patches it will be easier.

GhengisFarb™ · March 4, 2003, 15:00

Quote:

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
How am I supposed to get friends to play agame (let alone myself) that apparently takes between 10 to 20 hours of play to get the hang of, and isn't any fun while you're learning? The most likely result of trying would be ->

You are absolutely right. The entire underlying momentum of the MOO franchise was its multiplayer beat up your best friend ability.

The only people who will be playing MOO3 (SimSpace) are those of us who are diehard MOO fanatics and are stubborn enough to make MOO3 work.

wilebill · March 4, 2003, 16:52

Checked old Gamespot.com review of MOO2 Battle at Antares. They rated the learning curve of MOO2 at 2.5 hours. The difficulty level was rated as "Impossible." I think from the tone of the review "Impossible" referred to the difficulty of winning the game, not to the game mechanics per se. So I think the learning curve of MOO3 is only a bit over twice that of MOO2, maybe three times as difficult without a beginner tutorial.

I have never played MOO2, but I am more and more curious about it from all that has been said. I think it was a DOS program. Does anyone know if it will run in Windows 95 compatibility mode under Windows XP (assuming I could find a copy)?

The review implies it was a considerable lively game, though, with the selectable option of Antarans arriving unexpectedly out of hyperspace to "hoo'rah your place and bust it up."

kalbear · March 4, 2003, 17:05

Yeah, the antarans. Heh. Heheh. They were reALLY fearsome. Except so not.

Yes, pick up MoO2. Whatever you think of MoO3, MoO2 is a good game and is easy to learn. There's a lot of bad with it as well, but it's very addictive.

And I have heard success of people playing it in XP. It also is a windows program, so you should be able to play it that way.

Ianpolaris · March 4, 2003, 17:10

Guys,

Slightly OT, but where can I get Moo 2? After this 'experience' with Moo III, I want to do some real mooing again (to wash the taste from my mouth), but unfortunately I can not find my old Moo 2 CD....and I switched systems some time ago so I don't have it in memory.

-Polaris

kalbear · March 4, 2003, 17:19

You should be able to find it at various online stores. You might check ebgames first, or amazon. I've seen it for about $10.

I still find it highly ironic that the author of this thread now likes the game. Doesn't discount his arguments or anyone else's (except for CT, who still has not played the game and continues to troll), but it's amusing.

darcy · March 4, 2003, 17:27

Good old HotU lists this link

http://www.crucialstore.com/acatalog/STRATEGY.html#a27

for buying MoO2. But the price is in this horribly outdated currency called Pounds.

Arrian · March 4, 2003, 17:29

Yikes. Just checkin' in to see what people are saying and it sure looks ugly.

Then again, if I had decided whether or not to purchase CivIII based on the CivIII General forum threads right after it came out...

Keep the feedback coming, guys.

-Arrian

wilebill · March 4, 2003, 17:43

King Arrian, keep in mind that the founder of this thread later recanted and decided that he likes MOO3 after all and the last posting I saw he was playing and enjoying the experience. Sure, I want to try MOO2, but I am not giving up MOO3! I bought SimCity 4 the day it came out and later on discovered SimCity 3000 Unlimited and now play both with enjoyment. I hope the MOO series turns out the same way for me.

MOO3 has rough edges, teething problems, but these will eventually be fixed. Tonight I will spend another two or three or four hours playing and learning. Please, please do not take any of my words as discouragement.

Imran Siddiqui · March 4, 2003, 19:18

Hmmm... sounds like the CivIII debacle (and yes, that was a regrettable purchase in the end).

OH well, this looked like a good game.

vee4473 · March 4, 2003, 19:38

Quote:

Originally posted by Ianpolaris
Guys,

Slightly OT, but where can I get Moo 2? After this 'experience' with Moo III, I want to do some real mooing again (to wash the taste from my mouth), but unfortunately I can not find my old Moo 2 CD....and I switched systems some time ago so I don't have it in memory.

-Polaris

I found my copy in the bargain software bin at an ebgames store at the mall. $9.99 if i recall.
just the jewel case version.

It was literally just laying on the absolute bottom shelf of one of those rotateable shelf thingies. And on the bottom of the pile no less...
the shelves were a mess...as if wolves had ripped it apart looking for food..

(Ironically I was looking for a copy of CTP2...thinking that that should be readily available, and MOO2 is probably gone forever..but I found and got MOO2 instead).

You DO have to get in there and dig into the bargain bin though, never let the thought that there just aint no point in digging anymore stop you...you NEVER know what will turn up...(wow, some of the software you see...)

kalbear · March 4, 2003, 19:39

There's an ad for MoO2 right at the bottom of this page.

10 bucks from amazon.

Ianpolaris · March 4, 2003, 19:54

Kalbear,

Yep, I just saw that and took advantage of it. Thanks.

-Polaris

wilebill · March 5, 2003, 11:25

You can also get MOO2 from www.ebgames.com. I ordered mine yesterday with "two-day shipping" and still had change from a $20. "Two-day shipping" but it arrived this morning!

This evening I will print out the manuals from disk, load the program, and then if all goes well the resident strategy game newbie and self-proclaimed Master of Obtusity (huh?) who has never played MOO2 before will provide a first impressions report next day or two or three. The jewel case label says MOO2 will run under Windows 95 or 98, so Windows XP should run it either straight or under emulation mode.

MOO3 is going very well also. Last night I started a new game and playing as cyborg, managed to exchange mutual declarations of war with the AI silicoids by Move 4!

Arrian · March 5, 2003, 11:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Hmmm... sounds like the CivIII debacle (and yes, that was a regrettable purchase in the end).

OH well, this looked like a good game.

One reason I am simply taking a "wait and see" approach with MoO3 instead of writing it off is that I love CivIII. I was around for the hysterical ranting in the CivIII General forum when the game came out, and am wary of the same phenomenon here.

Still, the criticism I'm seeing here is mainly well-reasoned, concrete sounding stuff, which gives me pause.

I have a friend who is supposed to get the game soon, so I may wait for his opinion before deciding.

It definitely seems to need patching.

-Arrian

Ianpolaris · March 5, 2003, 12:26

Arrian,

If you have the opportunity (ask your friend!) to try the game first before buying it, then I strongly recommend that you do. I rather strongly suspect that you will not want to buy it yourself, but you never know. It might appeal. It has apparently for some here. Just because I can't understand that appeal doesn't mean you won't.

However, I urge you...all of you...not to buy it until you have playtested it out for yourselves. Too many stores will not take the game back.....which is the mistake I made.

-Polaris

Arrian · March 5, 2003, 12:48

Polaris,

I think he has the game on order... so there is no way to playtest it first (for him). He will just have to be my guinea pig

-Arrian

MitchDev · March 5, 2003, 13:05

Quote:

Originally posted by Arrian

I have a friend who is supposed to get the game soon, so I may wait for his opinion before deciding.

It definitely seems to need patching.

-Arrian

Do the safe thing, wait for your buddy to go on vacation or a business trip, borrow the game, and thoroughly test it as others have suggested.

There is an interesting game there, not a true MoO-game, but its not to everyone's tastes, I'm still on the fence with just a few days till my brother-in-law gets back to the states and will want the game back...

wilebill · March 6, 2003, 14:53

MOO2 loaded under XP without complaint.

Started MOO2 and was amazed. Now I see why people who have played MOO2 are disappointed with MOO3. Of course, having learned MOO3 to some slight degree I knew generally what MOO was all about, so getting rolling with MOO2 took somewhat less than an hour. I printed out the manual on disk but I could have left it as a .pdf file since all the information you need is right there in the program.

Graphics are 640 x 480 SVGA, but they are really well done and not hard on the eyes. Music through audiophile grade headphones is acceptable, not bad at all! The "Reference" in the program seems quite complete. There is right mouse button popup help for almost everything. Speaking of not hard on the eyes, all fonts in this program are sharp and clear and easy to read. No blur.

Well, what can I really say that everyone does not already know about MOO2? Excellent game, 5 stars, anyone can quickly learn MOO2 with at most an occasional glance at the manual, if that. I will be playing a lot of MOO2, no doubt of that.

I am not giving up on MOO3. MOO2 is now at patch level 1.31. According to a review I found, MicroProse took a very long time to fix the bugs in the original MOO2 release, so if QS's MOO3 follows tradition it may be six months to a year or more before MOO3 is in the same flawless highly polished state as MOO2.

If MOO3 survives, that is. Read the post-release reviews of MOO3 at Amazon.com by people who purchased it through Amazon. They are not good.

Ianpolaris · March 6, 2003, 15:06

wilebile,

Yes the 1.31 version of Moo2 is better than the original, but the original wasn't bad! AFAICT the 1.31 patch primarily corrected balance issues (such as the Creative Cost, Gryostabilizers), adjusted the enemy AI (to make it more aggressive in diplomatic contests), etc.

The point is that Moo2 version 1.21 (the original) was still better than Moo3....and considering that Moo2 was published in 1994 IIRC, that is almost criminal IMHO.

You are right thought. AFAICT the biggest critics of Moo 3 are ex-Moo2 players (I am one), and I think you are starting to understand why....

-Polaris

kalbear · March 6, 2003, 15:40

Ah, NOW I understand why people say that moo2 out of the box was fine.

They were playing 1.21. Or 1.2, I thought.

That's not how MoO2 came originally. It was a 1.0 release, and it had crashing flaws all over the place. That's the version I played, and I had to wait a while to get it to 1.2 . It wasn't just balance issues, it was things like shooting planets with shields caused CTD, weird customizing issues, total lack of challenge AI, strange bugs in space combat...all sorts of things.

Ianpolaris · March 6, 2003, 15:44

Kalbear,

You're right. It was version 1.2, and that was the way I got it straight from the CD....so at least for me (this was back in '95 of course), I found the game to be quite playable out of the box. Of course the balance issues were semi-serious which is why I loved the 1.31 patch, but that was neither here nor there for playability.

-Polaris

vmxa1 · March 6, 2003, 16:01

The later and finally boxes came with 1.2, but I had the original at 1.0 and it did have some significant problems, but was fun. 1.2 help, but was was still too easy to get the AI to surrender systems. 1.3 finally got most things fix and I think 1.31 corrected who goes first in assualting planets and a few other tweaks.
It will still crash on a rare occassion, but I managed to get dozens of games between them.
Arrian is correct that Civ3 boards had tons of unhappy players and still gts some, but the game worked out of the box for me and I understood it. Moo3 has no game bugs, but is very hard to get all the data you need to handle the game play. The more I understand it the better I enjoy it, but that is subjective.

wilebill · March 6, 2003, 16:27

"The more I understand it the better I enjoy it, but that is subjective."

Also subjective, it seems that the more I understand, the more to understand there is revealed because the gameplay horizons of MOO3, I suppose any game, expand with the stature of the player?

Do I remember from a pre-release review that MOO3 was at one time conceived as a program that would learn from the player and adapt the behaviours of the AI's to the player based on gameplay in prior games? (Maybe I am trying to believe that the reason the AI's are seemingly idiots in MOO3 is that the program is diagnosing all of US as idiots?)

Or am I confusing this with Galciv where game strategies get uploaded to the Metaverse when you connect, and you in turn get enhanced AI strategies downloaded to you that are based on the uploaded strategies of the best players so that the game as a whole learns to play more like a human over a period of time?

N4M8- · March 6, 2003, 18:39

No, I vaguely remember that as a stated goal because I remember thinking that the game would learn to play against me, then play like an idiot against a friend who borrowed my machine because it was geared to face me.

Not that I don't like the concept of adaptive programming, but I don't trust an industry that doesn't seem to understand what AI truly is to give me something that is truly adaptive and learns to play a generally strong game against all opponents.

vmxa1 · March 6, 2003, 21:30

You will not be seeing any neural net AI's in games any time soon.

Ianpolaris · March 6, 2003, 21:47

vmxa1,

A neural-net game would be neat to play I think, no (assuming it was developed well)? Oh well, we can dream can't we

-Polaris