This game could have been so much more appealing to so many more players if there had been someone on board with a better understanding of gamer psychology. This forum is seemingly abandoned by the devs, just like the Steam discussion board, this behavior only further reinforces the bad image of both game and studio. However I will still delve into several of the key factors that caused this game to be a flop instead of a gold mine, not because the game itself can still become a gold mine but because I want to leave a record of what went wrong in hopes that SOMEONE will learn something useful from it and maybe at least a future game will be better as a result.
Problem #1: Temporary vs. Permanent unfair conditions.
Not only is the terrain layout hidden until the map has been generated and the player is already about to land, it has also silently dictated the exact breakthroughs the player will encounter. Given that the terrain is partially possible to alter, it's only partially Permanent but can still be more than enough for a player to want to retry in order to get a more enjoyable location. What's far worse is the breakthrough generation; some breakthroughs essentially turn the entire game balance on its head while some others are so useless that it's glaringly obvious they were only included to pad out the catalogue. Had all breakthroughs been unimportant this would not have lead to the current issue: The players KNOW that some maps will be several times more enjoyable to their play style - this is in the neighbourhood of "FOMO", the "Fear Of Missing Out" that some games companies exploit to milk money from players by having timed offers for exclusives that are then removed forever. Rather than spend money to find out which map coordinates generate desirable breakthroughs the player is forced to progress for up to dozens of hours on a map to get this information - followed by the very high probability that it turned out the full set of breakthroughs was in fact not desirable and these dozens of hours were completely wasted.
Solution: Add an additional "layer" of breakthroughs.
The research function comes with a rather annoying quirk; by the time you have nothing left to research you most likely have a ridiculous research speed that is utterly useless. Rather than let this go to waste it would make sense to add a single extra row to each column - a very expensive "final" research that costs far more points than the wonders; a key that opens the remaining breakthroughs for research. Of course these "extra" breakthroughs should come at a staggering research cost, they should also NOT automatically start if no active research is selected so that a player who doesn't wish for a certain breakthrough to be researched can effectively keep it blocked. Of course the breakthroughs specifically relating to robotics should only be revealed by the "key" in the robotics column and so on.
Problem #2: Resource management.
For those who only try to speedrun up to the point of establishing a certain number of colonists, or whatever goal they might have, the problem is barely noticeable. For those who play to build a beautiful utopia, carved from the deadly red sand and carefully shaped with love for a long time, the problem becomes increasingly unbearable and absurd. Without the Mohole your colony WILL die eventually but it stops producing if one of its outputs fills up, this leads to a ridiculous situation of deliberately building useless things that require metal maintenance in order to be able to continue extracting rare metals. In addition to this you end up with ridiculous amounts of waste rock that piles sky high and nowhere to continuously get rid of it in a reliable way.
Solution: Alterations to building behaviours and access.
The Mohole should reasonably keep producing metals or rare metals even if only one of them has filled up by instead spitting out a greater amount of waste rock - which would represent waste rock full of whatever resource it can't currently mine. Of course the Mohole should stall if the waste rock slot fills up or if both metal and rare metal slots fill up. To combat the ever growing mountain of waste rock a player can opt to burn much of it to improve the atmosphere if the Green Planet DLC is installed, but only up to the point where the atmosphere reaches 100% - at which point all burning of waste rock stalls. While it's possible to keep burning if the atmosphere bleeds off continuously due to a lack of magnetic shielding, this approach is still "throttled" and you can't both keep the atmosphere at 100% and keep burning at the exact pace your colony needs to prevent a buildup. The best solution to this would be to change the special building that only Brazil has that can extract rare metals from waste rock and instead make this unlockable for ALL sponsors - additionally it should come with a reskinned version that can extract regular metals in the same fashion.
Problem #3: Nonsensical randomness.
Challenges in games typically greatly depend on unpredictability in certain factors to keep players on their toes and ensure that there is no "one size fits all" solution to winning, however not all random factors are created equal. The worst offenders are the "cooldowns" on terraforming projects; while it seems perfectly reasonable that it takes a little while to spot any nearby ice asteroids that can be captured, it can take a very unreasonable amount of time before it's possible to do this again. Far worse offenders are the magnetic shield and space mirror projects, there is NO reason to have ANY cooldown on these as it doesn't make a shred of sense - the only speed bump should be the resources it costs to launch these things. The game should also be more attentive to what's going on, ex: once you reach 100% water there can still be a remaining (unstarted) project to capture ice asteroids - this should be removed right away.
Additional smaller issues.
- Dozers should pick up scattered waste rock and bring it to storage if they're on auto and no landscaping is going on anywhere.
- Ability to turn off notifications for all buildings that are not set to High priority, because sometimes you need something running on normal priority but it will be unavoidably stalled at regular intervals.
- Ability to hide the icons for resources on the map. For players who want to build a beautiful colony in a beautiful landscape, those ugly cartoon splotches can ruin the entire scenery.
- There is no building that can keep feeding vegetation to the planet all the way to 100% and it doesn't grow by itself even after it has gained a solid hold, there should really be either a new building that spreads seeds high in the air or an additional mode in Forestation Plants that lets them consume double seeds and double power in return for a tiny bit of the seeds being carried around Mars by the wind.
There are numerous other things I could go into across the game but all of the above is the only stuff that should be easy enough to implement and should make a significant difference for a significant chunk of players. These changes would be far too late to generate a real "boom" in sales but it would go a LONG way to proving that the studio is competent, attentive of fans and learns from mistakes which has an impact on sales of future titles.
Problem #1: Temporary vs. Permanent unfair conditions.
Not only is the terrain layout hidden until the map has been generated and the player is already about to land, it has also silently dictated the exact breakthroughs the player will encounter. Given that the terrain is partially possible to alter, it's only partially Permanent but can still be more than enough for a player to want to retry in order to get a more enjoyable location. What's far worse is the breakthrough generation; some breakthroughs essentially turn the entire game balance on its head while some others are so useless that it's glaringly obvious they were only included to pad out the catalogue. Had all breakthroughs been unimportant this would not have lead to the current issue: The players KNOW that some maps will be several times more enjoyable to their play style - this is in the neighbourhood of "FOMO", the "Fear Of Missing Out" that some games companies exploit to milk money from players by having timed offers for exclusives that are then removed forever. Rather than spend money to find out which map coordinates generate desirable breakthroughs the player is forced to progress for up to dozens of hours on a map to get this information - followed by the very high probability that it turned out the full set of breakthroughs was in fact not desirable and these dozens of hours were completely wasted.
Solution: Add an additional "layer" of breakthroughs.
The research function comes with a rather annoying quirk; by the time you have nothing left to research you most likely have a ridiculous research speed that is utterly useless. Rather than let this go to waste it would make sense to add a single extra row to each column - a very expensive "final" research that costs far more points than the wonders; a key that opens the remaining breakthroughs for research. Of course these "extra" breakthroughs should come at a staggering research cost, they should also NOT automatically start if no active research is selected so that a player who doesn't wish for a certain breakthrough to be researched can effectively keep it blocked. Of course the breakthroughs specifically relating to robotics should only be revealed by the "key" in the robotics column and so on.
Problem #2: Resource management.
For those who only try to speedrun up to the point of establishing a certain number of colonists, or whatever goal they might have, the problem is barely noticeable. For those who play to build a beautiful utopia, carved from the deadly red sand and carefully shaped with love for a long time, the problem becomes increasingly unbearable and absurd. Without the Mohole your colony WILL die eventually but it stops producing if one of its outputs fills up, this leads to a ridiculous situation of deliberately building useless things that require metal maintenance in order to be able to continue extracting rare metals. In addition to this you end up with ridiculous amounts of waste rock that piles sky high and nowhere to continuously get rid of it in a reliable way.
Solution: Alterations to building behaviours and access.
The Mohole should reasonably keep producing metals or rare metals even if only one of them has filled up by instead spitting out a greater amount of waste rock - which would represent waste rock full of whatever resource it can't currently mine. Of course the Mohole should stall if the waste rock slot fills up or if both metal and rare metal slots fill up. To combat the ever growing mountain of waste rock a player can opt to burn much of it to improve the atmosphere if the Green Planet DLC is installed, but only up to the point where the atmosphere reaches 100% - at which point all burning of waste rock stalls. While it's possible to keep burning if the atmosphere bleeds off continuously due to a lack of magnetic shielding, this approach is still "throttled" and you can't both keep the atmosphere at 100% and keep burning at the exact pace your colony needs to prevent a buildup. The best solution to this would be to change the special building that only Brazil has that can extract rare metals from waste rock and instead make this unlockable for ALL sponsors - additionally it should come with a reskinned version that can extract regular metals in the same fashion.
Problem #3: Nonsensical randomness.
Challenges in games typically greatly depend on unpredictability in certain factors to keep players on their toes and ensure that there is no "one size fits all" solution to winning, however not all random factors are created equal. The worst offenders are the "cooldowns" on terraforming projects; while it seems perfectly reasonable that it takes a little while to spot any nearby ice asteroids that can be captured, it can take a very unreasonable amount of time before it's possible to do this again. Far worse offenders are the magnetic shield and space mirror projects, there is NO reason to have ANY cooldown on these as it doesn't make a shred of sense - the only speed bump should be the resources it costs to launch these things. The game should also be more attentive to what's going on, ex: once you reach 100% water there can still be a remaining (unstarted) project to capture ice asteroids - this should be removed right away.
Additional smaller issues.
- Dozers should pick up scattered waste rock and bring it to storage if they're on auto and no landscaping is going on anywhere.
- Ability to turn off notifications for all buildings that are not set to High priority, because sometimes you need something running on normal priority but it will be unavoidably stalled at regular intervals.
- Ability to hide the icons for resources on the map. For players who want to build a beautiful colony in a beautiful landscape, those ugly cartoon splotches can ruin the entire scenery.
- There is no building that can keep feeding vegetation to the planet all the way to 100% and it doesn't grow by itself even after it has gained a solid hold, there should really be either a new building that spreads seeds high in the air or an additional mode in Forestation Plants that lets them consume double seeds and double power in return for a tiny bit of the seeds being carried around Mars by the wind.
There are numerous other things I could go into across the game but all of the above is the only stuff that should be easy enough to implement and should make a significant difference for a significant chunk of players. These changes would be far too late to generate a real "boom" in sales but it would go a LONG way to proving that the studio is competent, attentive of fans and learns from mistakes which has an impact on sales of future titles.
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