The ARC and 'wayworld'?

I expect there will be... a Ship to be built. Then you would sail to another island, with higher tech, wanting you to build... a Big Ship that sails over the sea to another continent (island) where you get new tech levels and, surprisingly, a new maybe this time Metal Ship! This goes through to propeller planes, jets and spaceships.

Wow, already seen all the content of the game already. Somewhat disappointing.

Sigh, I've done it before so I might as well get this done now, here's my interpretation of each of these features:

"Arc is unlocked once last expansion shrine is completed."

They've hit the limits of mobile devices and need to manage the new memory.

"Player must repair the arc using huge amount of followers, Crops and ore"

The arc "building" will require a good 100-500 builders to operate. Crops and ore will hover at a level prohibitively high and taking at least a week to accumulate.

"Any workers involved in repair will be taken to a new land called “Wayworld”"

Say goodbye to all the builders on Homeworld. While working on the Arc, there's nothing else you can do and regenerating new builders will pretty much kill enthusiasm to stick around Homeworld.

"The arc will take a long time to build and take many resources, Up to 500 of your followers will make the voyage."

Yep, up to 500 builders can be put to construction. You thought a week was a long time? Boy, have we designed a timer for you. Oh, and expect to do NOTHING while it's being built since ALL of your available resources will go into its construction.

"Once the Arc is completed the player is prompted to set sail."

Press here to generate the new zone.

"A sailing transition screen is shown."

All the big names call this a cut scene. Likely, it'll just be a rehash of the Voyages ship animation.

"The arc will arrive a “Wayworld” and the player must house all followers aboard."

Flatten land quickly or all those builders will die. Otherwise, wtf does "house" mean since we don't actually create structures?

"“Wayworld’ contains a new timeline with new cards, any card not unlocked in “homeworld” remain unlocked."

The effects from Homeworld unlocks carry over but you can't unlock Homeworld cards from Wayworld. Returning to Homeworld will allow you to gather all the useless cards from before that are suddenly necessary on Wayworld.

"Through the settings menu the player can return to the original “Homeworld”, belief/crops/ore collected only apply to that world."

This reminds me of the fish aquarium game on my phone. I can use the menu to cycle between tanks. Each tank is fully contained, though Godus carries over unlocked effects (until they implement Arcs without this feature and fail to get it to work right).

"Wayworld
Completely different visually based on desert world where trees are cactuses and rocks are sands."

This is what we've kept our artists busy on for the last 6 months. New skin, same old game.

"Has 2 types of areas that are best for crops and abodes."

We've removed the artificial restriction on an additional level to see if this reduces complaints. We might even come up with a fluff excuse, but probably won't.

"Has 2 tribes of Astari who work under the same rules, except we advertise a massive treasure they are hiding."

See, we've ratcheted up the difficulty. Sort of. Oh, and if you clobber them, we'll give you something super duper cool. No, way better than the last thing we told you was super cool, or the one before that...

"An area that will contain a new tribe called the meanies (to be implemented in future update.)."

We have no idea what we're doing with this but we're going to experiment with some new game mechanics. Hope it isn't as bad as Astari...

"Has random sheep, that will be used in future settlement."

They could be roaming around or they could be another resource bar. Likely, they'll be a resource bar until the team can figure out how to put creatures back into the game.

"Uses dynamic water to make fertile lands."

We really really want this to work. Sure, we've been talking about this for ages, but this time it's for reals.

I'd say that the new area - whatever it will be - isn't going to be inherently "good".
In the sense that its existence within the grand scheme of Godus' design plans is a band-aid.

They couldn't deal with the exponentially growing population problem and further exponential growth will remain a problem going forward.
Its a stopgap, a temporary solution, a band-aid.
In the grand scheme of things, this new area doesn't "change" anything.
And unless they solve the other issues they'll keep running into them time and time again.

So even if they add new mechanics that can be perceived as good - they won't be good because of the new area. They'd be good because they're good new mechanics.
Mechanics that potentially add new problems and increase the pile of balancing issues and fixes going forward.


Which goes back to Tiki's post - unless 22cans goes back and solves those inherent problems.
They're gonna have quite an obstacle to overcome in the future.

There is, but given what 22cans has said about their design intentions, they originally didn't plan to go with an approach like this.
I'd go so far as to say that many of the recent additions and changes were all reactive ones to band-aid problems they encountered.
Rather than purposeful design decisions. Which leads me to believe that rather than being in control of their project.

It is infact spinning out of control with them haphazardly trying to apply makeshift solutions and jury-rigging new mechanics to stay afloat.
I would love to see 22cans stop, step back, look at what they have on hands right now. Then pick a direction and stick to it for a while.
All the while keeping communications and development open and transparant.

Rather than constantly implementing bandaid solutions to the problems they encounter and scrabbling to keep up with things.

Don't get me wrong I think 22cans approach is ass backwards and that this update will be more of the same but there is a small chance that this time they've got it right. Probably not though.

Perhaps we need them to implement a new policy - invest-to-develop.
For each new thing they add, they need to invest into the future of their game.
Rather than just focusing on monetization, they need to invest in longevity and actual gameplay mechanics =D

I predict that the Meanies will complaint to us that we're sculpting far too much and that our empire is far too flat.
They will complain when we sacrifice our followers into the Pit of Doom and they will complain that we're not making the world look 'delicious and zen-like'. =D

I also predict that they will get a rename to "The bullies" rather than "the meanies".


And I do agree with Earl. The water mechanic is horrendously broken. If you so much as touch an existing river it just stops functioning and the water flows for about a third or less of the distance.
Now imagine if you can only build near that water...
So rather than having the entire MAP to fill with farms, you can only make a handful of farms near the water.
The rest just don't work. Or are far slower.

My prediction for the Meanies is the first post-2.0 release combat implementation.  Rather than lure away followers with happiness, they'll raid our areas and kill our people.  Coupled with the Astari, there's going to be a lot fewer friendly people roaming around and doing stock animation activities.  "Ooh, look, the Meanies have killed all the builders at that expansion shrine for the third time."

I hope they don't raid while we are asleep