Bottom Line for Me (YMMV)

[Malleus]

Bottom line:

Do I understand the interface to the point that I am comfortable with it? (NOTE: NOT play well, simple comfort).

No, after 20 hours of play.

Should I have to go to several fora and spend another 20 hours reading and asking questions to understand what I am doing at the most basic levels?

No (after 20 hours of fora work.)

(INCLUDING: red test tube in research? NO ONE KNOWS what it means!)

Finally: Even the fora community cannot answer basic questions about how the game works and how to play the game -- including BETA TESTERS. Simply incredible.

Back to EU2 for me.

K

[vmxa1]

That is your perogative as Bobby Brown sang. I would say you have some validityto your complaint, but I am still hanging to see if I can figure it out. After all I have sunk about 70 bucks into it.

[Oddible]

Still have a few nagging questions myself but its started to come together for me. Straight up, I did a hard skim on the strategy guide. I have some real issues with games now costing $70 when purchasing the guide seperate from the manual, but then this isn't a first person shooter. This game is ridiculous.

Had some glitchyness with XP but installed all the latest service packs and DirectX9 and now things to be stable. Some annoying interface bugs, but its growing on me.

[Ianpolaris]

Guys,

The real bottom line is this:

The game is NOT FUN.

I could forgive the macromanaging, the cryptic interface, a manual that is less approachable than a graduate level physics test, if when all was said and done, the game .... was..... fun!

It isn't.

IMHO the primary reason that it is not is because the designers forgot one fundamental rule in game design:

K.I.S.S. [Keep It Simple Stupid]

Even chess (a classic strategy game) can be taught to a complete newbie in less than 15 minutes (including rules of en-passent, castling, and queening), but it takes a life-time to master all the approaches. However, said newbie, even while losing games, can appreciate what he did right and wrong during the process.

Perhaps a better comparison would be the classic Civ II. That game had a very steep learning curve for it's day, but even then, the game was interesting and FUN while you were learning. You could appreciate and learn from the mistakes as you made them, and because the consequences of your actions were clear, you could quickly master the basics.

None of this is true for MOO III which is why IMHO it is a wretched, wretched game. I played the game for almost two solid days (~1000 turns over various games). I quickly mastered the interface, but the experience soured me on the game for good....and I desperately wanted to love the game. In fact I did something with Moo III, that I have never done with any other TBS game. I killed the game when I was winning and uninstalled the game because I couldn't stand playing it another minute.

That is a damning indictment of a Civ type game...don't let anyone tell you differently. In short, if you have to "learn to like" a game, it is a bad and fundamentally flawed game by definition.

-Polaris

[Vince278]

For me it was playing a combination of Pax Imperia 2 / Space Empires IV / Spaceward Ho / Ascendancy. You'll notice MOO wasn't listed. It resembles those other games more than MOO. I expected it to be a leap above MOO2 as MOO2 was above MOO1. If one were to remove the backstory, change the names and some of the art, and repackaged and resold the game it would not be easy to compare it to the MOO line.

[H Tower]

Originally posted by Kromwel
Finally: Even the fora community cannot answer basic questions about how the game works and how to play the game

maybe because they haven't been playing very long either?

Back to EU2 for me.
K

http://apolyton.net/store/

[Vyshka]

Originally posted by Kromwel

(INCLUDING: red test tube in research? NO ONE KNOWS what it means!)

red test tube means, it has a prereq somewhere else
in the tech tree (from different school).

[vee4473]

does it tell you what the pre req is?

[Malleus]

I want people to realize that this was not intended as a flame, and I am not trolling. I am frankly amazed at how poorly documented and unintuitive the game is and how uneducated the beta testers are!

I have been involved in many games of this type from both beta test side and fanboi side WAITING. ALWAYS the beta testers stuck around and got the community up to speed before either vanishing or remaining.

The betas who are still around seem tired of answering the questions we have, and a frightening number of them simply disappeared!

Weird. Uncanny. And other stuff as well.

Still, having to beg for answers about icons is a little poor in my opinion.

K

[Vince278]

Agreed. One wonders what the beta testers were doing. I'm was always afraid they would be too excited about winning a contest and being a part of the game's development to be critical or objective. Sometimes I hate being right...

[Oddible]

Red test tube means there is a prerequisite - and it tells you what it is in the description at the top - typically something like:

Energy L10: Req Social Science L9

[Oddible]

Well, I dunno about a scathing 'not fun'. In fact, as I'm getting the hang of the interface its become more enjoyable. The point of this game IS its complexity. It is a very data oriented complexity that makes one a bean counter more than a gamer (there isn't even a ledger in CivIII).

Still, the Viceroy is the attempt to make the game playable if you don't want to micromanage. You can make old ships obsolete (or even troop ships if you so deem) and the AI won't build them - you can control mass management sliders that affect the way the AI builds and develops your system without even having to select a single item from the build queue.

Still, there are some incongruities. Such as the fact that there is an AI to handle your micromanagement for just about everything EXCEPT Shipyard. This game is very much about tactics so perhaps I'm coming at it from the wrong angle, but I don't want to have to redesign and mark ships obsolete every 2 turns!?! Can't the AI just keep a handful of required ships on hand - some big massive expensive ones and some small cheapies of all the various styles so I don't have to deal with this every turn...

[CharlesBHoff]

Originally posted by Ianpolaris
Guys,

The real bottom line is this:

The game is NOT FUN.

I could forgive the macromanaging, the cryptic interface, a manual that is less approachable than a graduate level physics test, if when all was said and done, the game .... was..... fun!

It isn't.

IMHO the primary reason that it is not is because the designers forgot one fundamental rule in game design:

K.I.S.S. [Keep It Simple Stupid]

Even chess (a classic strategy game) can be taught to a complete newbie in less than 15 minutes (including rules of en-passent, castling, and queening), but it takes a life-time to master all the approaches. However, said newbie, even while losing games, can appreciate what he did right and wrong during the process.

Perhaps a better comparison would be the classic Civ II. That game had a very steep learning curve for it's day, but even then, the game was interesting and FUN while you were learning. You could appreciate and learn from the mistakes as you made them, and because the consequences of your actions were clear, you could quickly master the basics.

None of this is true for MOO III which is why IMHO it is a wretched, wretched game. I played the game for almost two solid days (~1000 turns over various games). I quickly mastered the interface, but the experience soured me on the game for good....and I desperately wanted to love the game. In fact I did something with Moo III, that I have never done with any other TBS game. I killed the game when I was winning and uninstalled the game because I couldn't stand playing it another minute.

That is a damning indictment of a Civ type game...don't let anyone tell you differently. In short, if you have to "learn to like" a game, it is a bad and fundamentally flawed game by definition.

-Polaris

I disagree with you. First I like a game where you donot have all the answer on what went wrong. There was a book written on why WW I started call THE GUNS OF AUGUEST . The author went to the many head of states and all the key player at the lower level in government. None of then knew why WW I started and what went wrong in diplomacy to avoid WW I.

[Ianpolaris]

Charles,

The thing I was trying to get at (perhaps inadequately) was the almost complete lack of feedback. While I agree in a good strategy game you should seldom have all the answers, you should IMHO have at least some of them.

In Moo 2, Civ 2, and FWIW just about every other successful strategy game, you should tell, almost immediately what effect you would have on your empire by picking this particular govt, or this shift in population resource management, etc.

There is no reason why Moo 3 could not give the player this sort of immediate feedback and still not macromanage. The point is this: Tell me that my decisions matter and tell me why in concrete numeric terms that I can understand.

This is something MooIII willfully and deliberately refuses to do which is one (of many) reasons it is a wretched game.

Having said that, I know precisely why it doesn't. A human that is allowed to make 'optimal' decisions will always outperform any computer AI unless the AI cheats. This is why MooIII will not let you play the game (at least to any meaningful degree) at least IMHO and IMX.

-Polaris

[Vince278]

I don't think we should confuse complexity (which is good) with counter-intuitiveness and a lack of elegance (obviously bad)...

[Malleus]

Agree wholeheartedly. Now, how do I invade??!

K

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Kromwel
Agree wholeheartedly. Now, how do I invade??!

K

Manually run the space battle selecting 'assault planet' and win. After all space battles have concluded, manually control the bombardment phase and opt to drop troops.

You cannot invade a world that is below a certain level of population. Leave it a few turns and come back when its pop is 1,000 or higher.

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by H Tower

Can I get this on a T-shirt?

[Eric S]

Originally posted by Ianpolaris
Guys,

The real bottom line is this:

The game is NOT FUN.

I could forgive the macromanaging, the cryptic interface, a manual that is less approachable than a graduate level physics test, if when all was said and done, the game .... was..... fun!

It isn't.

I have to disagree on that. I had a blast this weekend playing MoO3. I've still got a lot to learn (I've lost 2 out of 3 games on Easy so far), but I can make things happen well enough that I'm enjoying it.

Is it a perfect game? Not even close. The UI needs work, the encyclopedia needs to be about 4 times the size it is now, and the AI has bugs involving war. War seems to be more a matter of attitude than action to the AI. I'm just as likely to be attacked by someone that isn't at war with me as some that has declared war. Also, I don't know if MoO3 has war weariness or anything like that, but the AI is constantly calling off the war only to redeclare it the next turn.

Doesn't change the fact that I am having fun.

[CharlesBHoff]

I play the game this entire weedend an I than haveing fun.
I must to autosave to play the game due to the Direct X Surface Unavailable error message when I try to save than game. Than I have Direct X 9 install.

[kalbear]

I stated this over at OS, and I'll state it here: this is the first TBS game I've ever played where I was looking more forward to the late game than the early game. It's not tiring MM at the end, your economy isn't going to fall into ruin if you don't check on each little planet. In fact, once the computer gets a surplus and you tell it what to do, it does a damn fine job of doing it for you.

It is a blast - a BLAST - to kill all those NO ships. That battle alone sold me forever on this game. There's a lot of other things as well, but that simple part of the game and all the effort and tech it took to get there, well, wow.

The battles themselves are a great example of why this combat system is so cool. When a NO carrier armada unleashes it's fighters, it's like a cloud of locusts. Missiles flying everywhere, beams shooting all over the place, massive explosions, ships fragmenting, people trying to frantically find that hidden stealthed TF...all good stuff.

There is a lot wrong, and it does make me annoyed. It annoys me that the AI is so great at managing my empire for me but apparently doesn't do at all a good job with my opponent's. Diplomacy is completely wacky and confusing. PD doesn't shoot down missiles reliably. Menuing is sometimes confusing, and the queues for each planet should be more easily accessible and changeable.

And it's still a total blast. I must've played 30 hours this weekend. Yep, I played all night.

[Togas]

Bottom line for me is the same ... am I having fun?

I picked a race I enjoy, I get involved in the areas of the game that I like, and I have learned to relax and let the Viceroys tend to the dull details that I always used to toil through. Sometimes I go crazy and change everything they're doing, other times I check in every 5 turns and smile as I see them building those new ships I designed. I pump my fist into the air when my fleet destroys those annoying Ithkul that were pestering my new colony, and I groan I see a report of another terrorist attack on my facilities, and quickly head over to my espionage department to "deal with" those S.O.B.s that did this henous act.

Sometimes I scroll through a list of worlds and mark up the ones we need to colonize next. Sometimes I have to manually tell my stupid scouts and colonists where they need to go. Sometimes I spend lots of time trying to make sweet bargains with other races. Sometimes I just hit end turn a few times to skip ahead to a battle I want to watch.

No matter what I do, I think that once I allowed myself to "let go" of the details and just do the things that I find interesting (as well as regulating by cleaning out old designs and changing Devs and deleting all the magazines from my planets' queues), the game becomes much more fun. I'm still learning it, and sure I get frustrated when I can't figure something out, but I'm not feeling the weight of responsibility of having to understand it all right now to be successful. My empire is successful now and it's only my first game. I look forward to learning more and trying out new things. But overall, I'm enjoying the process and enjoying the show and that's what it all comes down to for me.

--Togas