Tikigod is my Steam forum Hero.
Aug 31, 2014 20:22:23 GMT
Lord Ba'al, stuhacking, and 5 more like this
Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2014 20:22:23 GMT
Copy/pasta'd here for truth. I forum heart this guy/gal so much.
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Tikigod said:
I get what ryry117 is saying. But can't really agree with the conclusion being reached.
Yes 22Cans HAVE introduced some nice aspects to the game. The collecting wheat and so forth is a nice touch. Though farms were actually featured in 1.3.x with the first iteration of the bronze age if memory serves. And followers just naturally had the ability to mine gem deposits back in the original design where gems were still present before they were removed due to feedback the first time around.
But at the same time, they've introduced these nice aspects but followed it all by introducing many worse aspects that go completely against almost every single ounce of feedback that has been given to them in the last year.
People said some of the timers were too long. They tripled pretty much every timer (well technically they multiplied them by a factor of 13. But then introduced a unlock which reduces that by 10). In some cases made them more than 6 times longer even after removing the additional 10x multiplier they added to the base time.
People said they felt penned in and unable to really do anything. They penned everyone in further. Introduced enforced layer progression so higher layers are 'unlocked later' for use and made sculpting more expensive because "We don't want you to be sculpting yet".
People said the number of stickers to unlock cards was too high. They lowered them. Then soon after raised them to double in some cases triple the number of stickers that used to be required even before the costs were reduced.
People said voyages weren't their cup of tea, they didn't enjoy them. Please have more in the homeworld to not make voyages mandatory to progress. They made voyages even more mandatory with Molyneux himself admitting in the dev commentaries that you will frequently find yourself feeling like you have ♥♥♥♥ all to do, this is intentional because you should be doing voyages.
People said their followers felt souless and without life. They said 2.0 would include fantastic new AI where followers would observe your actions and build behaviour traits and react to that citing things like the B&W creature AI simularities. Around 9 months later and now at 2.1... we still got souless people and not one sign at all of this "Observant and adaptive AI".
People said settlements didn't feel like active cultural hubs. They gave people the ability to mash them all together into a single entity with even less diversity and interaction of the population of settlements. Now they all just live in the same super house and sit inside all day.
People said their civilisation didn't feel alive, their people weren't doing anything. Instead the player was just flying around doing everything themselves. The player plonks down settlements and your people just shift to that decision. The player places the exact objects that change peoples attributes... everything is about the player powers and activities, and there's no element left to your people themselves... your civilisation is static and does jack ♥♥♥♥. It might as well be a screensaver. So they added more powers for you to automatically plonk more things down to re-enforce that the only living thing in Godus is you.
People didn't like the ideas of gems in the early builds, even when they were easy to mine early on in the game with any worker follower, but were required to build anything beyond your 1st settlement. So they removed gems completely. Then a few months later after the build release that had no gems, added them back in, bigger, stronger and more in your face then ever before.
What I think RyRy117 is seeing, is the Community team being active, interacting and listening. And yes the community team are pretty awesome. To be blunt their actions are probably the only real thing holding Godus together at the moment.
But the community team can only listen, collect feedback and pass it on. The community team listening and interacting doesn't reflect the actual developers themselves listening to what is forwarded to them.
So whilst there have been some great changes introduced to Godus since the initial Early Access builds, it's come at the cost of what was actually good about those builds being removed in most cases.
The player no longer has freedom to play around and just throw themselves into the game for hours at a time, which was something that WAS possible even up to 1.3.x. Since 2.0, 22Cans development team seem to have made it their personal mission to limit what the player can do, and when in order to deliver a on-rails paced experience where everyone will share the same experience.
Everyone places their settlements at the same places, pre-allocated by 22Cans.
Everyone has the same terrain geometry, because anything but minor shaping is actively discouraged by design, by Molyneux's own admittance.
Everyone has the same civilisation, culture, people and technologies. No one really deviates because there's no option to deviate except the odd "I'm not going to have this useless unlock, because it's useless".
On the other hand, everyone will have their main source of belief be rocks for a significant part of their play. Because it's designed so that everyone has to get the rock belief unlock and smash rocks in order to try and actively fight against the very core design of the game and give themselves some kind of recurring belief income to be able to play when THEY want to play and not when 22Cans want them to play... though this effort is pretty futile as rocks are limited and expansion shrines are actively designed to halt your access to more rocks (amongst other things), which polices your belief availability so they can be sure you're not playing the game too much compared to how much they want you to be playing.
So 22Cans have added more aspects to the game, but at the same time, removed the game in the process. Instead there's a linear experience taking place within a pre-destined environment. And you're just along for the ride.
You don't decide the Astari need to be dealt with.
You don't decide that rocks are important or non-important to you.
You don't decide trees are important or non-important to you.
You don't decide if sculpting is something that interests you.
You don't decide if voyages are something that interests you.
You don't decide when you get to play, based on when you WANT to play.
There used to be a good foundation for open strategy formation by the player. But what was lacking was the tools to create and direct those strategies.
Now there is no foundation for open strategy formation by the player. But the tools to create and direct a strategy are there but all pointing to one pre-determined course of action.
And frankly, congratulating 22Cans on that and saying "This is better, you've really moved Godus forward" is something I don't personally agree with. But I can at least understand why someone may feel it's better for them after not following the journey and just returning after a year or slightly less and feeling that things have moved forward.
When really, they've just been moving sidewards and very much flying in the face of the general impressional feedback being contributed by Early Access players.
There's no way they can't have at least got a general outline from some of the feedback submitted in volume... yet they're actively working against it. And I don't really see how that could be a misunderstanding.
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Tikigod said:
I get what ryry117 is saying. But can't really agree with the conclusion being reached.
Yes 22Cans HAVE introduced some nice aspects to the game. The collecting wheat and so forth is a nice touch. Though farms were actually featured in 1.3.x with the first iteration of the bronze age if memory serves. And followers just naturally had the ability to mine gem deposits back in the original design where gems were still present before they were removed due to feedback the first time around.
But at the same time, they've introduced these nice aspects but followed it all by introducing many worse aspects that go completely against almost every single ounce of feedback that has been given to them in the last year.
People said some of the timers were too long. They tripled pretty much every timer (well technically they multiplied them by a factor of 13. But then introduced a unlock which reduces that by 10). In some cases made them more than 6 times longer even after removing the additional 10x multiplier they added to the base time.
People said they felt penned in and unable to really do anything. They penned everyone in further. Introduced enforced layer progression so higher layers are 'unlocked later' for use and made sculpting more expensive because "We don't want you to be sculpting yet".
People said the number of stickers to unlock cards was too high. They lowered them. Then soon after raised them to double in some cases triple the number of stickers that used to be required even before the costs were reduced.
People said voyages weren't their cup of tea, they didn't enjoy them. Please have more in the homeworld to not make voyages mandatory to progress. They made voyages even more mandatory with Molyneux himself admitting in the dev commentaries that you will frequently find yourself feeling like you have ♥♥♥♥ all to do, this is intentional because you should be doing voyages.
People said their followers felt souless and without life. They said 2.0 would include fantastic new AI where followers would observe your actions and build behaviour traits and react to that citing things like the B&W creature AI simularities. Around 9 months later and now at 2.1... we still got souless people and not one sign at all of this "Observant and adaptive AI".
People said settlements didn't feel like active cultural hubs. They gave people the ability to mash them all together into a single entity with even less diversity and interaction of the population of settlements. Now they all just live in the same super house and sit inside all day.
People said their civilisation didn't feel alive, their people weren't doing anything. Instead the player was just flying around doing everything themselves. The player plonks down settlements and your people just shift to that decision. The player places the exact objects that change peoples attributes... everything is about the player powers and activities, and there's no element left to your people themselves... your civilisation is static and does jack ♥♥♥♥. It might as well be a screensaver. So they added more powers for you to automatically plonk more things down to re-enforce that the only living thing in Godus is you.
People didn't like the ideas of gems in the early builds, even when they were easy to mine early on in the game with any worker follower, but were required to build anything beyond your 1st settlement. So they removed gems completely. Then a few months later after the build release that had no gems, added them back in, bigger, stronger and more in your face then ever before.
What I think RyRy117 is seeing, is the Community team being active, interacting and listening. And yes the community team are pretty awesome. To be blunt their actions are probably the only real thing holding Godus together at the moment.
But the community team can only listen, collect feedback and pass it on. The community team listening and interacting doesn't reflect the actual developers themselves listening to what is forwarded to them.
So whilst there have been some great changes introduced to Godus since the initial Early Access builds, it's come at the cost of what was actually good about those builds being removed in most cases.
The player no longer has freedom to play around and just throw themselves into the game for hours at a time, which was something that WAS possible even up to 1.3.x. Since 2.0, 22Cans development team seem to have made it their personal mission to limit what the player can do, and when in order to deliver a on-rails paced experience where everyone will share the same experience.
Everyone places their settlements at the same places, pre-allocated by 22Cans.
Everyone has the same terrain geometry, because anything but minor shaping is actively discouraged by design, by Molyneux's own admittance.
Everyone has the same civilisation, culture, people and technologies. No one really deviates because there's no option to deviate except the odd "I'm not going to have this useless unlock, because it's useless".
On the other hand, everyone will have their main source of belief be rocks for a significant part of their play. Because it's designed so that everyone has to get the rock belief unlock and smash rocks in order to try and actively fight against the very core design of the game and give themselves some kind of recurring belief income to be able to play when THEY want to play and not when 22Cans want them to play... though this effort is pretty futile as rocks are limited and expansion shrines are actively designed to halt your access to more rocks (amongst other things), which polices your belief availability so they can be sure you're not playing the game too much compared to how much they want you to be playing.
So 22Cans have added more aspects to the game, but at the same time, removed the game in the process. Instead there's a linear experience taking place within a pre-destined environment. And you're just along for the ride.
You don't decide the Astari need to be dealt with.
You don't decide that rocks are important or non-important to you.
You don't decide trees are important or non-important to you.
You don't decide if sculpting is something that interests you.
You don't decide if voyages are something that interests you.
You don't decide when you get to play, based on when you WANT to play.
There used to be a good foundation for open strategy formation by the player. But what was lacking was the tools to create and direct those strategies.
Now there is no foundation for open strategy formation by the player. But the tools to create and direct a strategy are there but all pointing to one pre-determined course of action.
And frankly, congratulating 22Cans on that and saying "This is better, you've really moved Godus forward" is something I don't personally agree with. But I can at least understand why someone may feel it's better for them after not following the journey and just returning after a year or slightly less and feeling that things have moved forward.
When really, they've just been moving sidewards and very much flying in the face of the general impressional feedback being contributed by Early Access players.
There's no way they can't have at least got a general outline from some of the feedback submitted in volume... yet they're actively working against it. And I don't really see how that could be a misunderstanding.
