Iris
Participator
Posts: 10 
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Post by Iris on Mar 1, 2015 14:01:33 GMT
Do I read correctly that upgraded trees speed up mines? Is this something that only works for people who play on the computer or also in the mobile version? I play on android and would love it if there's a way to speed up mines. I'm not sure if the gem upgrades work in the same way on the mobile version, but on the PC version you can spend gems to upgrade most powers (button underneath the power itself when you bring up the menu). The first upgrade for trees make them speed up farms, and the second upgrade makes them speed up mines. Upgrading the powers works the same on mobile, I think. It does say that it will upgrade the fields, but since my amount of gems is limited, I didn't want to try it without confirmation ^^ Since the first upgrade does the same, I'll risk it. EDIT: It works!  Oh, this could have saved me so much time. Waiting 13-14 hours until mines are finished means that I'm always short on ore. I didn't want to flatten my land too much, so my mines are relatively small. Thanks for mentioning this upgrade. Excuse me while I go build a giant forest next to my mines. |
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Post by Crumpy Six on Mar 1, 2015 16:52:15 GMT
I'm aware from the chat in the Shoutbox that this let's Play session encouraged several of us who have not played Godus in a long time (including myself) to re-load the game after a long hiatus and have a proper go at it. I think this might include Qetesh and Lord Ba'al. I'd be interested to hear from these players what their impressions were, and how they found the playthrough? This seems like the kind of information that would be valuable for 22Cans. My strongest feeling following this is that building should not require wheat. The method of expanding was very straight-forward and predictable, and then suddenly for no reason wheat was required. As I had not been anticipating this I had not planned for it, and was immediately in a situation where building abodes went from being free to being phenomenally expensive. And the cost was in a resource that I had next to none of, because I'd literally only just unlocked it. This is firsty illogical (because if I didn't need wheat before, why do I need it now?) and secondly immediately created an enormous barrier with no clear workaround, other than to wait for hours or sacrifice loads of followers to get gems and work my way out that way. Equally, with voyages, I kept being asked to pay gems to achieve things - either to play the next voyage ("speed up reinforcements!") or re-play and old mission to attempt to get 3 stars. Like most players, I want to get 3 stars, especially when the voyage is incredibly trivial. So I was unsure why it appeared that no more than 2 stars was even possible. It was also unclear why gems would need to be spent to replay or to advance further. This is extremely mobile-oriented. How do the gems help my reinforcements get there faster? Are gems steroids? Why should I have to pay to do any of these things? This is just plain lazy on 22Cans part. The whole concept of "reinforcements" should not be in the PC version. Regarding the cards/stickers mechanics, I don't have much to say about this. I found the whole thing to be very clunky and odd and at no point was I paying very much attention to what cards were unlocked or what I was trying to achieve by unlocking them. As soon as I had stickers avaialble to me, I dragged them to whatever cards were available to be stickered-on (with no regard for what the card actually did, because as a new player it's impossible to judge what is actually going to have long-term value and what isn't). I focused on the 'quick wins' and unlocked the easy cards first because it's pretty sickening to spend 15 minutes and 20,000,000 belef digging up a chest with a sticker in it, only for that sticker to give you about 2% progress towards unlocking the next card. As noted before, my playthrough ultimately ended with me being in a frustrating and 'stuck' situation which resulted in me exiting the game in frustration with no intention to revisit it. |
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Post by Aynen on Mar 1, 2015 17:16:19 GMT
I agree that the transition between free houses and houses costing wheat is not working well. There is a sudden drop in progress there that shouldn't be there for smooth continuous play.
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Post by darkmoondragon on Mar 1, 2015 17:34:42 GMT
Interesting. There's a lot of great information here which will be useful when I get around to playing again. There are also a bunch of very useful criticisms and comments here which I hope 22Cans will take seriously. I would call this a success. I have also decided that I've "won" the version I was playing in so far as that word might be stretched to have any meaning. I realize I'm taking a huge leap of faith with that statement but hey,... might as well be positive about it.
Thanks for this thread.
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Post by 13thGeneral on Mar 1, 2015 17:45:24 GMT
Some great feedback and observations. What really saddens me the most is that all of these are long-standing issues that we have repeatedly expressed to 22Cans. Yet, here we are.
Hopefully this group effort playthrough has put the spotlight back onto these "problem areas" and provided some important - and much needed - insight into what should be focused on in the coming changes.
Notice that none of the issues dealt with combat of story, directly, but rather core structures effecting overall balance and gameplay.
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Post by Spiderweb on Mar 1, 2015 18:12:30 GMT
I would agree with Aynen on that point. I approached this playthrough almost as a new player, because I haven't sat down and played Godus properly in close to a year (I tried it out after the Astari got introduced but stop as soon as a 45 minute timer was introduced, about 15 minutes into the game). There are now several more mechanics in place that I wasn't familiar with. I think I played for about 3 hours, and attempted to unlock everything that presented itself to me as soon as it appeared - the game encourages you to do this, so in so far as there is a 'right' way to play then this is surely it. Given how excruciatingly hand-holding the tutorials and prompts are (a million "this is a blah!" prompts popping up constantly, which don't disappear until you either follow the instruction or manually click x) the actually strategy of how to play the game is very unclear. I got myself in a situation where I had 3 farming settlements with 5 fields between them. I was disappointed to learn you had to manually harvest wheat (WHY?). I couldn't build any more nearby abodes to increase the size of these settlements because (without any warning) the abodes now also cost wheat to build, and the fields procuded at a painfully slow pace. I tried the Rain of Purity to speed up production but it was still extremely slow, and now that most of my abodes had been mashed into farming settlements in a desperate attempt to get more fields I didn't have as much belief to spend on god powers. Basically, the wheat requirement for building brought my game to an abrupt standstill. rubgish's stream was very educational. He was the only player I watched who seemed to achieve what you'd consider good progress and a decent-looking homeworld, and he did it by gaming the system. Rubgish can correct me if I've misunderstood this, but I gather the strategy was something like: - Early on in the game while the happiness rating is unimportant, sacrifice loads of followers to get gems - Spend gems to max out upgrades on everything and buy any stickers you need - Once everything has been upgraded you're pretty much invinsible and the game runs at a much more tolerable pace - the radius of belief auto-collection is immense, trees + rain of purity bring fields to harvest in a matter of seconds and a single meteor destroys the entire Astari civilisation so they are eliminated. It wasn't quite as bad as that in terms of gem usage, I never actually had to spend gems for stickers which was nice to see. The path I ended up going down was as follows: - Play as normal until the auto-collecting belief shrine was available. (I think I may have finished the voyages at some point here which could explain why I had sufficient stickers)
- Spend all the early gems (~30) on fully upgrading the auto-belief shrine. This increases the area each shrine covers by 900% - i.e. it's absurdly good. From this point on I never really had to think about belief. I ran low a few times from spam-placing trees but that is about it.
- Before I placed a single farming settlement, I sacrificed a few people to get enough gems to twice upgrade my farming settlement (~30). This let me have I think 12 farmers per settlement and a much bigger squish radius (which incidentally is also a great way to save on belief).
- My people were super unhappy so I lost 17 or so to the astari, but it's only a once-a-day thing so it's actually sustainable to lose some people now.
- Once my farms were made, I spent yet more gems to upgrade trees so they boost farm output (by 2% per tree!), and then placed as many trees as I could afford around the farms.
- This meant that each of my farms was producing wheat in <1 minute, and if I used rain of purity (upgrade ~30 gems) it was less than a second (so ~150 belief) to fully fill up all my farms. From this point on, wheat wasn't an issue either.
- At some point along the way here I spent gems to upgrade meteor, fired /one/ meteor at the astari and that 100% wiped them out.
- Did basically the same thing with ore as I did with wheat once it unlocked, upgraded x3 via gems & wheat then placed a bunch of trees. More ore than I could ever need.
Overall I would say I had to sacrifice maybe 50-100 people to get enough gems. I did sacrifice more because I upgraded a couple of unrelated things too, but purely for the purpose of advancement all you need upgraded are settlements, auto-belief and trees.
Essentially after maybe 6 hours of actual playtime (I went afk for dinner and lost all my farms to astari raiders, they are super fucking annoying), I have more than enough resources to go to weyworld, I just have to get over there. The only annoying bit about this whole process is the astari raiders, who still seem to be spawning even after I wiped them out. Having to waste a minute going and hitting them with a finger of god is frustrating and a total waste of time.
Some great tips in that! |
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
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I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Mar 1, 2015 18:26:45 GMT
I did not play any voyages despite the annoyingly ever present text overlay prompting me to do so.
I spent 10 gems on upgrading some type of card (I don't remember which) and afterwards I felt mildly dirty.
I placed a farming settlement and found that it immediately drained all progression and fun out of the game.
I placed some auto belief collection shrines after waiting forever to finally get the last sticker I needed only to find them disappointing. They incessantly pling all the time which gets tiresome rather quickly. Apart from that it is ridiculous that each shrine you place comes at a higher price to the last one.
Not long after I found that the Astari had burned down a couple of dosen houses, not to mention some trees which I had specifically left alone. I found out that I couldn't rebuild the houses because I didn't have any wheat and it was at this point that I thought "fuck this shit".
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Post by hardly on Mar 1, 2015 18:29:10 GMT
I just want to say I've really enjoyed reading all the comments. I think continued events like this at sensible intervals will be great for improving the quality of the game. Would be great to see 22cans staff in there playing alongside the community next time (assuming none made it this time).
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Post by Spiderweb on Mar 1, 2015 19:45:00 GMT
I did not play any voyages despite the annoyingly ever present text overlay prompting me to do so. I spent 10 gems on upgrading some type of card (I don't remember which) and afterwards I felt mildly dirty. I placed a farming settlement and found that it immediately drained all progression and fun out of the game. I placed some auto belief collection shrines after waiting forever to finally get the last sticker I needed only to find them disappointing. They incessantly pling all the time which gets tiresome rather quickly. Apart from that it is ridiculous that each shrine you place comes at a higher price to the last one. Not long after I found that the Astari had burned down a couple of dosen houses, not to mention some trees which I had specifically left alone. I found out that I couldn't rebuild the houses because I didn't have any wheat and it was at this point that I thought "fuck this shit". In iOS the trees become more expensive as you play, I was placing 3K trees! I think we're lucky that's not the same for PCs! |
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Post by earlparvisjam on Mar 1, 2015 20:41:24 GMT
I suggest we try out some other games too. How do you all feel about that? I'm all for it. After yesterday, I've been pondering what games people would actually WANT to watch me and my crazy/noisy/busy family play. I dream of a private computer room... Then again, streaming with my son's randomness might be amusing for people. |
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Post by Qetesh on Mar 1, 2015 21:06:27 GMT
I have to say my biggest pet peeve is how hard it was to sculpt on a laptop touchpad. I did add a mouse back on at a point and did not find it much easier. I can assume this is still a beta thing but at times it seemed worse than the alpha build was. My other big problem is how juvenile so much of the game feels. I don't mind some, but enough of it is too much and I find it annoying. I worry how disjointed a complex story line might feel with pink bubbles, happiness meters , chests, cards and stickers. I could see playing this game with a child more so than fellow adults. I want something harder than a 5 year old can grasp.
I avoided the voyages too, my hand was hurting a bit from the glitchy sculpting and belief collection so I just killed a ton of peeps to cheat my way to upgrades with gems. The Astari ruined my happiness before I even had access to make a fountain so that sucked for me.
I must admit I turn volume down in most games, so no harm no foul for me in that respect, even my sims annoy me with volume on.
I would really like to see everyone on Stonehearth, but it is not free. I think I backed for 15 dollars to get the game. I would also suggest Theme Hospital, it is another PM game, and I really like that one. I have never played Black & White so that would be cool, and I have played Populous a few times. I am pretty open to try new games with our group. I will say one thing, I suck at combat. lol. I can do FF pretty good, but I would not really call that combat.
All in all, I say, yes, let us compare and celebrate our love for games. We can re-do Godus as new major features or builds come out, but there our tons of other games to give a go while giving Moo and 22cans some more time to finish the game.
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Post by 13thGeneral on Mar 1, 2015 22:16:00 GMT
I went back into the game today, to apply the "strategies" - that were so well demonstrated by rubgish's gameplay - and within a few hours I was generating unlimited belief and wheat, attained 100% happiness, haven't even unlocked mining, and have barely expanded past the first few beacons. There's really no reason for me to keep playing now. |
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Post by Gmr Leon on Mar 1, 2015 22:24:18 GMT
Not to hammer on Godus too much more, but it sounds clearer and clearer (especially with observations on rubgish's playthrough) that the reason they haven't touched the wheat wall is because it's essential to their monetization. Speeding up construction is icing on the top, but clearing the wheat wall requires either extreme patience or gems, from the sounds of it. Everything post-farming is essentially spend money, since I doubt gems gained in-game alone would be enough to afford the farm/mine upgrades that reduce it to anything resembling a reasonable timeframe. If I were up to it, I'd check again for myself, but I think everyone that participated can pretty much attest to this. It's nothing new, as ever since the new settlement system we've pointed out how progress plummets to a crawl unless you submit, however I think it is slightly new that we've seen how significantly gem use alters it. Especially if you know what to go after with their use, which the game takes advantage of you not knowing by letting you waste gems on a variety of other things in the hopes that it will keep the game interesting to you. It wouldn't shock me in the least if they knew the first batch of gems are all wasted on speeding up construction or getting stickers to move along the timeline (which they'd probably love, especially if it gets them closer to the wheat wall sooner) and they're content not to advise you (in this, of all areas, isn't that curious?) because the sooner you lose them, the higher the chances you might pay up. Oh, but you can still get some in-game, so they're not completely mean about it! Except if memory serves, it's rarely ever enough to afford anything in the exchange/store. Let's also remember that, outside of voyages, mining the gem seams has proven incredibly unintuitive for many, many users, and it isn't helped by the facts that not only is it finicky to get working but you can completely miss gathering the gems! In the mobile version, that's literally losing free money because the game doesn't want you to know, because what's free money for you is lost money for them. I'm sure that may all sound a tad on the nutty, conspiratorial side, but no one there is stupid, they know what they're doing. You don't just happen to heavily guide the player in everything else, then conveniently forget to explain the nuances of your monetization. That's entirely intentional. The more informed the consumer, the harder the sell, so best to leave them thinking it's only a few dollars here and there and there's no optimal purchases to improve your experience with the game in any substantial way. If you told them upfront what rubgish found, many more would probably only spend enough to grab those upgrades, burn out and leave. There's already a good chance nobody's spending much at all and are leaving in droves as-is, except for the whales, which is exactly what they were hoping for anyway via this design. Whales are the best because they're irresponsible with money and information (i.e. they neglect to inform themselves). Edit: Gonna see if I can endure enough to make it to the Rubgish Method. Can check it if you hate yourself. Edit2: lol, hour in and the leashing tutorial killed my game. So much for that. |
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
Pledge level: Half a Partner
I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
I don't like: Dimples in the bottom of scotch bottles; Facebook games masquerading as godgames.
Steam: stonelesscutter
GOG: stonelesscutter
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Mar 1, 2015 22:52:09 GMT
I think you're really on to something there Gmr Leon. Also, rubgish, perhaps you could write up a strategy guide to help people maximize their efficiency while minimizing their spending. |
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Post by rubgish on Mar 2, 2015 0:21:47 GMT
I think you're really on to something there Gmr Leon. Also, rubgish, perhaps you could write up a strategy guide to help people maximize their efficiency while minimizing their spending. I'll write something tomorrow afternoon/evening when I have a bit more free time. Remind me if I haven't done it by this time tomorrow please! |
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Post by hardly on Mar 2, 2015 1:07:09 GMT
I think you are right GMR re the progress barriers to encourage F2P people to buy gems. This is the most frustrating thing about the development, the corruption of the gameplay to support free to play.
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Post by hardly on Mar 2, 2015 1:09:26 GMT
Your people should eat wheat. The annoying thing about GODUS is the way resources are used. Arghhh makes me so mad to talk about it. And Qetesh I can't believe they haven't fixed scultpting, grrrrr! Make it ergonomic FFS. I try to be nice and level headed but these issues have been around for so long it makes me crazy.
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Post by mindless on Mar 2, 2015 5:24:44 GMT
One glaring thing in my opinion, that seams missing from the game is some sort of end goal, a motivating force that drives you forward.
Is it to collect stickers? Is it to attain 100% happiness, is it to reach a certain population threshold. I have no idea because the game doesn't tell me, I assume the game doesn't even know itself. At the moment it seams like there are no goals, no end point to work towaards.
The voyages part of the game which appears to be generally looked down upon by the players. Does provide a basic motivation, you have to save your guys by getting them from point A to B. So why is this part of the game, which appears to give some reason to play being avoided? I have my suspicions about it being too simple or to annoying (you should be able to switch of their whistling) but is there some other reason why people don't like it?
Could it be because it just doesn't mesh with the rest of the game where you are essentially a city planner, and this part of the game provides you no ability to build anything? If this were settlers then I could picture my guys setting up a base camp, then producing weapons, training up some fighters, and then conquering territory. But here we have no such ability. There is almost no strategy involved other than avoidance. If that's all your able to do then after doing that repeatedly your going to get bored of it.
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Post by hardly on Mar 2, 2015 6:10:40 GMT
One glaring thing in my opinion, that seams missing from the game is some sort of end goal, a motivating force that drives you forward. Is it to collect stickers? Is it to attain 100% happiness, is it to reach a certain population threshold. I have no idea because the game doesn't tell me, I assume the game doesn't even know itself. At the moment it seams like there are no goals, no end point to work towaards. The voyages part of the game which appears to be generally looked down upon by the players. Does provide a basic motivation, you have to save your guys by getting them from point A to B. So why is this part of the game, which appears to give some reason to play being avoided? I have my suspicions about it being too simple or to annoying (you should be able to switch of their whistling) but is there some other reason why people don't like it? Could it be because it just doesn't mesh with the rest of the game where you are essentially a city planner, and this part of the game provides you no ability to build anything? If this were settlers then I could picture my guys setting up a base camp, then producing weapons, training up some fighters, and then conquering territory. But here we have no such ability. There is almost no strategy involved other than avoidance. If that's all your able to do then after doing that repeatedly your going to get bored of it. I don't think its an end goal that's lacking, I think its a lack of an ability to progress meaningfully and a lack of scope for creativity. Look at minecraft, what is the end goal there?
GODUS needs progression, but not the kind of progression we have now where we expand without reason and without progress. Current progression is like those nano doomsday scenarios where the whole world is taken over with black sludge.
For me the goal of GODUS should be to develop your faith, these are your people because they believe in you and I want to have them worship me in the most advanced ways. So at the start of the game they live in mud huts subsisting on a hunter gather lifestyle and worship me by offering me pieces of meat. The game should be about developing from this to a modern utopia where they worship me through the creation of vast wonders. I imagine a great capital city like Mecca, Rome or Jerusalem sitting in the middle of a religious empire spanning many cities, even nations. It would be funny to have religious wars between cultures and then sub culture wars between petty nations who believe in you. Combat like that would be more interesting to intervene into if it was two nations fighting who both worship you. I'd like to see a great nexus of trade and religion form at the centre, so that expansion fuelled its growth as wealth was channelled to the centre. Then the "end game" would be who creates the most elaborate empire. This would be enhanced if have different types of terrain was necessary so you'd have creative maps where people designed terrain around both aesthetics and efficiency. This is what GODUS should be, not this pale imitation of a game.
I forgot to say who needs story or levels when you have creativity instead.
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
Pledge level: Half a Partner
I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
I don't like: Dimples in the bottom of scotch bottles; Facebook games masquerading as godgames.
Steam: stonelesscutter
GOG: stonelesscutter
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Mar 2, 2015 6:57:47 GMT
I imagine a great capital city like Mecca, Rome or Jerusalem sitting in the middle of a religious empire spanning many cities, even nations. It would be funny to have religious wars between cultures and then sub culture wars between petty nations who believe in you. Combat like that would be more interesting to intervene into if it was two nations fighting who both worship you. It certainly would. And it would also be a great way to implement those commandments. Some people believe this way is the way you would like them to behave, some believe that way is the way you want them to behave. They start fighting. You help out the people that behave in the correct way and/or strike down those who don't. Presto, a commandment is born. Of course you would need some kind of indicator of what they are fighting about and of what each side's individual opinion is. I could picture a system where an idea bubble appears over a persons head. If that person meets another there are three possibilities. Either the other person accepts the idea as his own, opposes the idea and forms an alternate opinion, or is completely indifferent to the idea whatsoever. The latter could be achieved by giving each follower a random influentability factor. Once a lot of people get the same idea and a group of others has an opposing idea a conflict could arise between 2 or more factions. A perfect opportunity for god to intervene, or for god to sit back with the feet up and enjoy the show. |
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Oh, this could have saved me so much time. Waiting 13-14 hours until mines are finished means that I'm always short on ore. I didn't want to flatten my land too much, so my mines are relatively small. Thanks for mentioning this upgrade. Excuse me while I go build a giant forest next to my mines.
