Some Final Thoughts Regarding 4.0 Rework Before The Last Open Beta Patch

[vulcan7200]

So we have three days before the final Open Beta Patch before they start the process of integrating it into the game, and unless it has massive sweeping changes I think it's safe to assume it will look mostly like what we see now. Zones are obviously a contentious issue, not just due to the broken nature of the Beta (As all Betas are), but as a concept. Some like the idea as it is, some dislike the idea entirely, some want to see the idea implemented in different ways. I mentioned in a previous Beta thread that I think part of the issue is the vagueness of what the Developers are attempting to do with the new system, and why they think it's better than the current version of the game at doing these things. The biggest point seemed to be customizing City Distrcits, so much so that they started implementing special names for each combination of Zones. A small part of the implementation seems to be to lean away from Buildings, and add restrictions to them to restricting them to certain Zones as well as Planet restrictions in general due to the limited nature of Zones. A lot of people joked originally that we're not in a Beta, we're in an Alpha. However today's build makes me feel like we're actually even further back and are actually in the Concept stage.

Ignoring number balance at the moment (As those can easily be adjusted) the new design starts working against their original ideas. Now part of this is due to listening to the community's feedback which is of course a good thing for those of us who were against the current design of Zones and those who are against them in the entirety. However it also is a bad thing from a bigger picture point of view as it feels like the entire project was not fully thought out and they're simply playing it by ear which does not work for such a big change and when it's being rushed out the door very soon.

3.996 goes against their stated design philosophies for what they intended Zones to be. The removal of 1/3 of the Zones makes the City District less customizable than before, which again is probably their most cited goal for the change. I also feel the addition of dual Zones like the Industrial Zone and the recently added Archives as well as the removal of things like the Amenities Zone also highlights how the heavily restrictive Zones simply were not working as a design decision. Now these again were asked for by the Community, so I'm not saying they're necessarily a bad change, but the fact that they felt the needed to add/remove them implies that they understand 2 to 3 Zones was simply not enough for the game to function well and/or be fun.

As for their other stated goal, Building restrictions, the Urban Zone (And now Capital Zone having 6 Building Slots) also implies they understand that Building Slots are an integral part of how the game plays and can not just easily be turned into "Passive Buff Slots" for the Zones. They also changed the base Buildings to only granting a pool of Jobs with no passive buffs and removed the Planet Limit that was originally there. This is because, as many of us pointed out, adding massive restrictions to Zone Buildings only hurt the game and removed people's abilities to fine tune things on the fly that they might actually need to succeed. Something the Developers listened to and the assumption would be agreed with.

In the past few weeks we've seen their core concept of how they want Districts/Zones/Buildings to work shift to no longer really being what they set out to do. They've had to constantly move the system back towards what we already have in 3.14 just to make it start working well and I think that speaks volumes about the system as a whole. It also speaks volumes about where this system must have been in development before we got our hands on it. We'll never actually know how much internal testing they did on Zones before they let us play around with it, but now that we can look back in hindsight about how it worked in 3.99 versus what we have now it feels like it was never out of the first stages of a Concept phase. It feels like the core ideas behind Zones were never given any thought to how the game would ACTUALLY play with the changes beyond "This is what we hope it will do". For me the biggest example of this was Amenities Zones being present in 3.99. I don't believe for a moment that a team of game developers who spent time diving into brainstorming sessions about how the whole system rework would miss that Amenities could not work as a Zone and that it needed Players to tell them this.

Eladrin said in another thread today that he believes they will be adding Zones for planetary features, civics and planetary decisions throughout the Summer. This to me again feels like a system that never went through a serious brainstorming stage if we're looking at months after launch for the entire system to be truly playable. Origins and Civics are a core feature of this game that are important to the identity of your Empire. Each and every one of them should be ready at launch, and by 4 weeks away should have already had serious consideration into what each of them would do with the new Zone system. Otherwise, I think it's fair to say that the system is simply not ready or working as originally intended. Players deserve better than to be shipped 75% of a rework and told that they'll get the other 25% later, especially for a system that was already working fine as is.

 

[SS Boss]

They should just continue with the beta until it reaches a good state instead of launching another Megacorp/2.0-sized cataclysm upon us.

It's funny to think about it, why such a large scale rework on an almost-10-years-old game (that's reviewing pretty great on Steam recent reviews, it was >90% positive some days ago, if you take the off-topic chinese review bombing out) that's almost ensuring a drop to mixed or worse if it drops the way it looks like it will drop.

 

[Thiend]

Players deserve better than to be shipped 75% of a rework and told that they'll get the other 25% later, especially for a system that was already working fine as is.

I've come around to liking the concept for what it opens up, but I think 75% is extremely generous. 75% would be "sound mechanics, poor polish." This is "unsound mechanics, poor polish."

I think it's more like we have 25% of a rework. The devs know what they'd like it to do generally, but fairly transparently have no idea even the specifics of what they want it to do and absolutely no solid framework of how it will do it.

That's a pretty good state to start a beta with, but it's an atrocious one to end that same beta still in. It needs another round, preferably after 4.0 and without crowbarring it into 4.0 itself.

They should just continue with the beta until it reaches a good state instead of launching another Megacorp/2.0-sized cataclysm upon us.

It's funny to think about it, why such a large scale rework on a almost-10-years-old game (that's reviewing pretty great on Steam recent reviews, it was >90% positive some days ago, if you take the off-topic chinese review bombing out) that's almost ensuring a drop to mixed or worse if it drops the way it looks like it will drop.

I have a horrible feeling that if this goes live without another round of working on it, what we'll get is a year of wasted potential and undersupported actual DLC mechanics as they try to unbreak what Zones in their current state would do to the game.

It's an amazing slate of things I knew I wanted (improved defenses, updated ascensions, fixed growth mechanics, reduced RNG hell, phenotype traits, partial credit to precursor selection list) and things I didn't know I wanted, but do, badly (bioships in their specific implementation, massively reduced lag I didn't expect to be possible).

All of which will be undersupported and overshadowed if Zones don't become in the next just over four weeks what they've failed to in the last nearly four weeks, all while the devs need to put effort into fixing the huge portions of the game that we can see outright don't function in that same period.

 

[vulcan7200]

I've come around to liking the concept for what it opens up, but I think 75% is extremely generous. 75% would be "sound mechanics, poor polish." This is "unsound mechanics, poor polish."

I think it's more like we have 25% of a rework. The devs know what they'd like it to do generally, but fairly transparently have no idea even the specifics of what they want it to do and absolutely no solid framework of how it will do it.

That's a pretty good state to start a beta with, but it's an atrocious one to end that same beta still in. It needs another round, preferably after 4.0 and without crowbarring it into 4.0 itself.

You're right that 75% is probably generous. I was going off the fact that they do still have 4 weeks and MAYBE they can manage to make it work but I understand that is being very optimistic.

 

[fourteenfour]

It is a matter of not going all in and instead trying to graft a new system on top of an existing system. I get it, they did not want to do the district model because the UI basically ran out of space for all the district types available. Yet at the same time I suspect many of us did not want to just spam the same building over and over and yet here we are. There is another topic about removing energy as a currency and that the remaining systems in the beta still treating it as a currency need to convert to Trade. Yet here rolls in PDX stating it was always their intention to keep Energy as a currency.... and I like others are going "SAY WHAT?!"

Here is my take. A trade based game offers the chance to greatly reduce the complexity of the economics in this game but it requires PDX to take this to the extreme. The game can survive on two planet based resources of minerals and agriculture. This supports support organic, mineral, and machine, based specie just fine. The game can survive on greatly simplifying what is produced from these resources. They could drop consumer goods and amenities and operate all population needs off of the generic idea of trade. Strata would just impose higher trade needs. The point is that the game becomes easier to understand to any player but also code for the AI. From trade we can drive science, unity, and all forms of upkeep. We can have specie who make alloys from minerals, agriculture, or both. If the economy is simplified they can exist off a simple district system coupled to unique buildings. City, Industry for alloys, Research, Trade, Minerals, and Agriculture, would cover all needs. Six simple districts modified by a number of unique buildings; we eliminate barracks spam by just having one allow building a set number of armies and such. The city district along with unique buildings would cover unity just fine.

All we have now is such a complex system with exceptions galore that all the code in the last decade could never make a competitive AI because even the designers could not make the economic model work.

 

[NorseGod]

It is a matter of not going all in and instead trying to graft a new system on top of an existing system. I get it, they did not want to do the district model because the UI basically ran out of space for all the district types available. Yet at the same time I suspect many of us did not want to just spam the same building over and over and yet here we are. There is another topic about removing energy as a currency and that the remaining systems in the beta still treating it as a currency need to convert to Trade. Yet here rolls in PDX stating it was always their intention to keep Energy as a currency.... and I like others are going "SAY WHAT?!"

Here is my take. A trade based game offers the chance to greatly reduce the complexity of the economics in this game but it requires PDX to take this to the extreme. The game can survive on two planet based resources of minerals and agriculture. This supports support organic, mineral, and machine, based specie just fine. The game can survive on greatly simplifying what is produced from these resources. They could drop consumer goods and amenities and operate all population needs off of the generic idea of trade. Strata would just impose higher trade needs. The point is that the game becomes easier to understand to any player but also code for the AI. From trade we can drive science, unity, and all forms of upkeep. We can have specie who make alloys from minerals, agriculture, or both. If the economy is simplified they can exist off a simple district system coupled to unique buildings. City, Industry for alloys, Research, Trade, Minerals, and Agriculture, would cover all needs. Six simple districts modified by a number of unique buildings; we eliminate barracks spam by just having one allow building a set number of armies and such. The city district along with unique buildings would cover unity just fine.

All we have now is such a complex system with exceptions galore that all the code in the last decade could never make a competitive AI because even the designers could not make the economic model work.

I do think there is a space for Energy and Generators in the game, But with Trade being added as both a form of Credits, and to represent shipping and logistics, it's definietly not as a currency. I feel like Energy being Traded between planets doesn't quite make sense, unless we go for a sort of "Cosmoteer" type system where Energy is being made at Generators and carried where they're being used as Batteries, which is kinda crazy. Instead, the idea of power generation would fit more into the idea of creating Infrastructure as a planet-locked resource for Districts or Buildings, similar to Amenities for Pops.

The question would be how to implement something like this in the game. RIght now Amenities are kind of a problem, because they can only be made via Buildings, which is become a scarcer resource on the planet screen, espcially with building slots not scaling with Planet Size. The "Govt Zone" on large worlds rapidly becomes the "Amenities Zone" instead, to try to serve the needs of the Pops. In fact, what is the point of Amenities as a game concept anymore? It used to be a way to keep people from spamming the same buildings over and over, but that's been handled now by limiting building slots. Same thing with Housing, if every District adds Housing, what is the point of it being a tracked resource?

 

[TheArchduke]

Yeah, my feeling is also that this change is not really thought through. I liked the purge of warp and wormholes, but the step right now is.. Bad.

 

[Aurelio123]

Mechanics aside I am scared of how the AI is going to be in May. It took over a year to make the AI somewhat work for post 2.2 economic rework.

 

[Marmelado]

Honestly, it would be better for everyone (players, designers, corporates) if they just scrapped the idea entirely, cut the losses, make 4.0 just a more polished 3.14, keep new mechanics that work, adapt upcoming DLC content to 3.14 mechanics and go back to drawing board.

Rather than living through Stellaris version of catastrophic EU4 Leviathan release.

 

[NorseGod]

Honestly, it would be better for everyone (players, designers, corporates) if they just scrapped the idea entirely, cut the losses, make 4.0 just a more polished 3.14, keep new mechanics that work, adapt upcoming DLC content to 3.14 mechanics and go back to drawing board.

Rather than living through Stellaris version of catastrophic EU4 Leviathan release.

Or, make "Zones" the name of the box that contains Districts, and allow planets to have 2+ choiced for "custom" districts. These could have Buildings within them, or leave Buildings seperate, either has pros and cons.

 

[Casko]

I just hope this won't be another GoE release....