The ARC and 'wayworld'?

Not really excited by this feature, but I am gald to see some actual info being supplied.

Weird that they are doubling down on the astari which many people have said are annoying and broken.

I like the sound of the dynamic water fertilising fields but last I checked dynamic water wasn't that dynamic. I tried to divert a river in the current build and it just broke the river. Hopefully they've got it working.

The thing that worries me is that people's home worlds were pumping out resources, will the new world cut us off from these? It would be painful to be back in belief poverty.

Also pit of doom will it be on the new world?

I feel sorry for 22cans (just a little) this is a big content update and obviously they put a lot of work into it only to be undone by ios8 issues

Where are the 500 followers going to live? Are they gonna tear the ark apart to build houses?

A new tribe called the meanies... seriously? Is this marketed to 5 year olds?

I like the idea of getting that kind of detail information break down in advance.

But the whole Arc idea to me is 22Cans just proving that there is seriously some direction focus problems internally that will drag Godus down with them.

Someone(some people?), somewhere in 22Cans is obsessed with content. They think everyone playing the early access and iOS versions need a full wealth of content already and that this is the only thing that should be worked on.

Later they can fix all the broken, un-fun and utterly unbalanced elements to everything once they've bloated down the entire game with more content just thrown in and bolted on wherever they could find a suitable surface.

Arcs are not going to solve a single damn thing, nor are they going to address the actual subject matters that need to be addressed to make people enjoy the game more. A large quantity of people after their first week or two (depending on time investment per day) seem to uniformly come to find the homeworld  fundamental experience disinteresting and rather disengaging. This is a problem with the entire scope of the civilisation/homeworld experience from belief balancing problems, to restrictions on player choices, funnelling the player almost from room to room, inability to play outside the scope of 22Cans singular manner, card unlock pacing problems introduced in 2.1, and the broken utilisation of gems and happiness.

Adding multiple homeworlds will not solve or anyway address those problems, it's just additional bloat for 22Cans to introduce haphazardly with a "We can fix it later" mentality.

By as they've shown by this point... later never comes. They just keep piling on the broken new content on top of last sprints broken content, and I'd be surprised if they didn't already find themselves at the point where the list of broken shit they've thrown in thinking they'll fix it later hadn't already got to the point where they're not adopting a "Keep it broken, find a way to make everything else work around it" stance.

So to 22Cans I'll repeat what I said in another thread:



Yes... yes it does. But that's not the realities of this game yet.

We have no civilisation.

We have no culture.

We have an entirely non-fun experience that is full of functionality holes, haphazard mechanics bolted on that still haven't been properly fleshed out and an ever increasing list of those things.

So make sure the realities of the game reflect your dream, before you start on new aspects branching off of that dream. Otherwise you'll just be working to something that exists only in your imagination.

I completely agree with you ba'al. Adding content without addressing fundamental issues doesn't really help. If anything it makes home world feel like and incredibly long and frustating tutorial and casting it aside removes any chance for enduring creativity. Imagine if at some point minecraft made you abandon you initial world. Why would you want that? Knowing this world will also be cast aside (perhaps in favour of hubworld?) means that we won't want to invest too much in the grind here however.

There are positives to this however. If the meanies are done well they could be fun. I think 22cans missed an opportunity to discuss these mechanics with us before they entered development. We could have talked about improving the astari, how the meanies work (I don't mind the childlike name), how dynamic water works and what should carry over from home world. That would have been a really constructive and I hope productive discussion but opportunity missed. The fact that they didn't discuss it with us makes me suspicious that there are some cynical elements they know we won't like.

Assuming astari are fixed (happiness mechanic isn't punishing and gift dependent), meanies are fun and challenging and dynamic water works (I can manipulate terrain and rivers through sculpting) then this will be a welcome addition. Let's hope they pull it off.

Not terribly surprising though. It's a repeat of Peter's past designs. More extensive thoughts on the ark matter here.

I do have to pip up in there defense that everyone in the company can not be doing bug fixes and as others have said they need content. SO I would hope that they have some programers working on bug fixes and this is content they had in the pipeline. I am glad to see them adding new resources, but not sure why they removed old ones and have not added them back. With sheep being added back I wonder if we will see wolves again.

It does sound like that. Which is a rather awkward way of designing a game. The further into the game you get the more restrictive it becomes.
Its both counterintuitive aswell as everything BUT zen-like. (I'd say its outright frustrating to have the game block you at every junction.)

I dunno, I've seen a few mobile users report that the game leaves them with nothing to do for long drawn out periods of time. It also was ripped apart by mobile press for exactly that reason as well.

It wasn't because there wasn't enough 'end content' in the builds, it was because throughout the game was constantly telling them to piss off and that they can't play right now... exactly what you don't want a casual "Play on the move, whenever you want" mobile game to be doing.

So I'm not sure it can really be said that mobile users aren't feeling the impact of the broken mechanics and flawed design.


If 22Cans carry on as they are, they'll be trapping themselves in an almost text book situation of MMO development cycles... you can never produce controlled packaged content faster than your players can consume it. It's silly to even try, what is needed in those situations is enough engaging features and goals for the player to keep themselves occupied whilst you then work to a slower content release pace to push out more periodic content releases on a larger scope.

That said, 22Cans haven't got Godus in any state where they should be adopting that kind of position for themselves. They don't have even the fundamentals working yet, let alone being able to move forward with establishing a situation where they can keep players occupied with what they have at hand.

It does raise the question if 22Cans have noticed that they have failed to establish a state of occupying the player, but haven't actually made the collation between that and the fact that they're constantly leaving the whole fixing the broken fundamentals situation for later, and instead have fooled themselves into thinking that the only answer is focusing on trying to push out more content faster than people can consume it, and will use whatever tricks necessary to artificially rig the results they want, making the already broken environment even more broken and problematic and people commenting on not enough to do... which would then lead them to further conclude they need to develop new content even faster and slow down the player through the same artificial restrictions (longer timers, higher sticker costs, reduced effectiveness of gems) even more... and repeat the cycle until they pass out from blood loss from smashing their heads against their self made wall too many times.