It really depends on the sub-forum. Honestly, some games (usually smaller games) tend to have pretty good people driving those discussions. Other games (usually big AAA titles) are full of assholes and trolls, and asshole trolls.
Skimming the Planetfall forum just now, I see a much larger slice of people asking questions, answering questions, and having opinions without being assholes about it, so it seems (at least for now) to be the former.
I may not be following the conversation very well, if we are talking about if Steam forums/community can be toxic, yes, and they will do so with any popular game, as the trolls come out to play. If we are talking about specific forums right now, then this one seems fine. I can’t argue Steam can be a toxic place, it’s the same with every forum, in every thread for big titles with a lot of traffic, because the majority of gamers continue to be garbage people.
Ahhh, I understand what you’re saying now. In that case, I think the solution is just to set the patch level to what the group wants/is familiar with which is the equivalent of Paradox not continuing development / DLC. That way no need to worry about base game changes that confuse anyone or needs a bunch of explaining?
For something like Stellaris which had a lot of issues, I could see that not being a great solution. EU4 was excellent since release though, so maybe just lock in at Art of War or whatever expansion the group agrees on and that way play time doesn’t have to be devoted to teaching new mechanics?
Paradox forums themselves can be pretty toxic too, but for different reasons. Yes there are blatant trolls in some areas, but people get passionate about things. It’s pretty easy to forgive once they settle down, and if the game is good, like it should be, and they don’t DLC the hell out of it, the push back won’t last.
Oh yeah. We can handle it. Hell we played CK1 MP, and that game… it wasn’t a matter of if you experienced a game breaking bug but when, and the more people playing the worst your chances were. It’s just not a great experience with MP; I didn’t say it’s impossible. Coordinating that much DLC is just not adding to the fun; it’s an avoidable hassle. I doubt we will ever return to Stellar, and the key mess with one of our members means CK2 is out.
Paradox has earned their rep, the good and bad. Fortunately Triumph doesn’t have that rep, and while it’s okay to be worried about certain influences, there’s no reason to avoid or wait and see with this particular game. It’s not my favorite theme, but this looks like good ole Triumph to me, so far.
Haha. There is nothing out there even close to the kind of experience CK is. It’s just so unique we had to try. Of course back then you didn’t like a thousand new games a day either and a gazillion F2P MP. Age of Wonders was awesome MP itself, before MP was so popular and us MP players got chased off forums with pitchforks.
It’s looking good to me, I just wish it was coming out sooner.
The pieces I don’t know about really yet are the strategic layer. W/O playing through a campaign I don’t know for example whether the paradox diplomacy they’ve inserted “fixed” diplomacy or not. I do know that I play team AOW3 on a random map for the express purpose of never opening the diplomacy screen. So it’s hard to imagine whatever it is they’ve done isn’t an improvement from that.
The tactical to me looks fantastic. Cover looks to matter more. Overwatch is a brilliant addition. In fact it looks like unless I’ve misunderstood from the video they’ve outdone xcom on that front and force the player to choose the direction (set of squares) they want to cover for in overwatch.
Over all it still gives me a very AOW3 goes to space with refinements feel. And I’m very much ok with that because AOW3 ranks up in my top 10 easily and works pretty hard at cracking top 5.
I feel like this thread has many opinions and thoughts, but I am curious what yours are at this point?
For my own stance, I watched about 3 hours of footage of the game recently, and every video clip and stream to date, and read every diary. I’m all in. I even think I am glad they went for a more sci-fi feel. I just played another game of AoW3 and it’s amazing and not going anywhere, so I am excited for sure.
I think the core mechanics are an advancement. The main complaints form AoW3 have been addressed, and extra new stuff has been added.
For example:
sectors
production and research rollover
lower unit tier relevance
anti infinite colony spam mechanics
more in depth city mechanics
64 bit engine (ergo no real limit to number of units and mods possible)
much more focus on races
I think trying to set up a new IP, new lore etc is more challenging that reiterating and adding charm to the established fantasy canon, so there is a chance the game will be drier than aow3, but i suspect the mechanics themselves will be much more interesting.
Plus, every iteration of the series has steadily become more complex, so combine possible dryness due to setting (it’s much easier to parse a fireball than it is to parse cryogenic ablative refractive laser armour) and the fact that this game has ALOT more going on under the hood, and I suspect it’ll be either:
easy to learn, hard to master - as in you can play the game well enough by grouping some Troopers together, lobbing grenades and massing Tyranodons, but the skill ceiling will be effectively infintie as you combine things.
OR
hard to learn and hard to master.
I’m hoping the first.
I think it is a better game than AoW3, certainly than AoW3 at release.
I also think it will have more legs than Aow3, and oddly enough, less competition. There aren’t very many sci-fi terrestrial games that I know of.
Pandora and Beyond Earth iirc.
I’m hoping the late game busy work (click so many times to do certain actions, repeat so many times per turn, every turn…) is reduced or eliminated.
